Henry Francis Lyte

Henry Francis Lyte (1 June 1793 - 20 November 1847) was an Anglican divine and hymn-writer .

He was born near Kelso in Scotland, and was educated at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh and at Trinity College, Dublin. He took holy orders in 1815, and for some time held a curacy near Wexford. Owing to bad health he came to England, and after several changes settled, in 1823, in the parish of Brixham. In 1844 his health finally gave way; and he died at Nice.

Lyte's first work was Tales in Verse illustrative of Several of the Petitions in the Lord's Prayer (1826), which was written at Lymington and was commended by Wilson in the Noctes Ambrosianae. He next published (1833) a volume Poems, chiefly Religious, and in 1834 a little collection of psalms and hymns entitled The Spirit of the Psalms.

After his death, a volume of Remains with a memoir was published, and the poems contained in this, with those in Poems, chiefly Religious, were afterwards issued in one volume (1868). His best known hymns are

• Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;
• Jesus, I my cross have taken ;
• Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven ; and
• Pleasant are Thy courts above.

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