Lyrics:

1. Father, cheer our souls tonight;
Lift our burdens, make them light.
Let thine all-pervading love
Shine upon us from above.

2. Calm the surges of the soul;
Bid the dark waves backward roll.
Let us all thy mercies feel
Thru the pow’r thou dost reveal.

3. Bless our loved ones far away;
Grant them health and peace, we pray.
In their hearts let holy light
Beam to guide their steps aright.

4. Let implicit faith and trust
Help us know thy ways are just.
May thine ever-tender love
Lead our hearts to thee above.

Text: Ellis Reynolds Shipp, 1847-1939
Music: Orlando Gibbons, 1583-1625, alt.

-History: (Source: Wikipedia)

Written By: Ellis Reynolds Shipp

Ellis Reynolds Shipp (January 20, 1847 – January 31, 1939)^[1] was one of the first female doctors in Utah. She founded The School of Nursing and Obstetrics in 1879, and was on the board of the Deseret Hospital Association.

Born Ellis Reynolds, she came with her family to Utah Territory in 1852. Her family was among the early Mormon pioneer settlers of Pleasant Grove, Utah. In 1866, Ellis Reynolds married Milford Shipp. She bore a total of ten children, six of whom survived infancy.^[2]

Shipp began studying at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1875 leaving her children behind in Utah Territory in the care of her husband’s other wives. Brigham Youngsponsored her education in the Eastern United States and she later did further medical studies at the University of Michigan.

Shipp wrote the words to “Father, Cheer Our Souls Tonight” which is in the 1985 English edition of the LDS hymnbook. In 1910, she published a book of her own poems entitled Life Lines.^[3]

Dr. Shipp served as a member of the Relief Society General Board from 1898-1907. She also served on the general board of the Young Women.^[4] Both the Relief Society and the Young Women are organizations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Music By: Orlando Gibbons

Orlando Gibbons (baptised 25 December 1583 – 5 June 1625) was an English composer, virginalist and organist of the late Tudor and earlyJacobean periods. He was a leading composer in the England of his day.

One of the most versatile English composers of his time, Gibbons wrote a quantity of keyboard works, around thirty fantasias for viols, a number of madrigals (the best-known being “The Silver Swan“), and many popular verse anthems. His choral music is distinguished by his complete mastery of counterpoint, combined with his wonderful gift for melody. Perhaps his most well known verse anthem is This is the record of John, which sets an Advent text for solo countertenor or tenor, alternating with full chorus. The soloist is required to demonstrate considerable technical facility at points, and the work at once expresses the rhetorical force of the text, whilst never being demonstrative or bombastic. He also produced two major settings of Evensong, the Short Service and the Second Service. The former includes a beautifully expressive Nunc dimittis, while the latter is an extended composition, combining verse and full sections. Gibbons’s full anthems include the expressive O Lord, in thy wrath, and the Ascension Day anthem O clap your hands together for eight voices. He contributed six pieces to the first printed collection of keyboard music in England, Parthenia (to which he was by far the youngest of the three contributors), published in about 1611.

Gibbons’s surviving keyboard output comprises some 45 pieces. The polyphonic fantasia and dance forms are the best represented genres. Gibbons’s writing exhibits full mastery of three- and four-part counterpoint. Most of the fantasias are complex, multisectional pieces, treating multiple subjects imitatively. Gibbons’s approach to melody in both fantasias and dances features a capability for almost limitless development of simple musical ideas, on display in works such as Pavane in D minor and Lord Salisbury’s Pavan and Galliard.^[3]