Herr, des Tages Mühen und Beschwerden

Herr, des Tages Mühen und Beschwerden. Karl Johann Philipp Spitta* (1801-1859). First published in Spitta’s Psalter und Harfe (Pirna, 1833) in four 8-line stanzas. It was entitled ‘Am Abend’ (‘At Evening’). As the words ‘Mühen und Beschwerden’ (‘trouble and complaint’) indicate, it brings the day’s problems before God in an evening hymn. It was translated by Richard Massie* as ‘O Lord, who by Thy presence hast made light/ The heat and burden of the toilsome day’, found in ‘Wesley’s Hymns’ (1876) and in the Wesleyan Methodist Hymn Book (1904) in six 4-line verses, shortened to four in...