Henry Francis Lyte

LYTE, Henry Francis. b. Ednam, near Kelso, Roxburghshire, 1 June 1793; d. Nice, France, 20 November 1847. He was the son of an army officer, whose military career necessitated frequent moves, through Scotland, England, and, finally, to Ireland. He was educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen (where he began to compose poetry), then, from 1811, at Trinity College, Dublin, where he won a university scholarship, and the Chancellor's prize for English verse in three successive years. He graduated (BA 1814), and considered a career in medicine; but this was soon abandoned in favour of Holy Orders (deacon 1814, priest 1815). His first curacy was in Taghmon, Co. Wexford, where he stayed for eighteen months, but his frequent attacks of asthma forced him to resign; he then travelled through France on horseback in 1816-17. After his return to England Lyte found a position in Marazion, Cornwall, and married Anne Falkland in 1818. It was while at Marazion that Lyte underwent a spiritual experience at the deathbed of a neighbouring clergyman; he claimed that this encounter altered his whole view of life: he emerged with a deeper faith, and preached with a new vitality. The dying man, Augustus le Hunte, kept repeating the phrase ‘Abide with me’, which may have been the germ of the hymn that was written more than twenty years later.

Lyte moved several times in the early 1820s through Hampshire and Devon, before settling in Brixham in 1824. He developed a keen interest in education, conducting annual school examinations and establishing the first Sunday school in the Torbay area. In 1826 he became the first incumbent of Lower Brixham (perpetual curate of All Saints’), and subsequently published Poems chiefly Religious (London, 1833; Second Edition, 1845), which contained some of his early hymns, including ‘Long did I toil, and knew no earthly rest’*, which takes its inspiration from a poem by Francis Quarles* (Lyte had a considerable interest in the devotional poetry of the 17th century). Most of his best known hymns are taken from The Spirit of the Psalms (London, 1834); these include ‘Praise, my soul, the King of heaven’* (based on Psalm 103) ‘God of mercy, God of grace’* (Psalm 67), ‘My spirit on Thy care’* (Psalm 31), ‘There is a safe and secret place’* (Psalm 91), ‘Pleasant are thy courts above* (Psalm 84), and ‘Praise the Lord, His glories show’* (Psalm 150).

Lyte’s hopes of obtaining preferment were hampered by increasingly debilitating asthma and bronchitis; during the 1840s he spent increasing periods abroad, particularly in Italy, with only brief visits home. In 1847 he passed the summer, in very poor health, at Berry Head, Devon, where he wrote his most famous hymn, ‘Abide with me; fast falls the eventide’*. In October 1847 he returned to the continent, eventually reaching Nice, where he was seized by influenza and dysentery, and died on 20 November, ministered to by Henry Manning (later the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster); he was buried in the English cemetery there. A posthumous volume edited by his daughter Anna Maria, Remains of the late Henry Francis Lyte (1850), consisted of poems, sermons, and letters, and also included ‘Abide with me’. Though his poetic energies were directed at scripturally and evangelically minded audiences, his lyric gift was more widely appreciated. His ‘Jesus, I my cross have taken’* and ‘My spirit on Thy care’ have been extremely popular in America. 

A memorial tablet to Lyte was placed in Westminster Abbey in 1947.

Leon Litvack

Further Reading

1. A.A.M.H. [Anna Maria Maxwell Hogg] Remains of the late Henry Francis Lyte (London: Francis & John Rivington, 1850)
2. John Appleyard, ed., The Poetical Works of the Rev H.F. Lyte (London: Elliot Stock, 1907)
3. ———, Henry Francis Lyte: a short biography (London: Epworth Press, 1939)
4. B.G. Skinner, Henry Francis Lyte, Brixham’s Poet and Priest (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1974)
5. J.R.Watson, ‘Henry Francis Lyte: Bicentenary Reflections’, Bulletin of the Hymn Society, 198, (January 1994), pp. 2-11.
6. Leon Litvack, ‘Lyte, Henry Francis (1793-1847)’, ODNB.