Light of the lonely pilgrim’s heart

Light of the lonely pilgrim’s heart. Edward Denny* (1796-1889). First published in the Plymouth Brethren collection edited by James George Deck*, Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1847), and then in Denny’s Hymns and Poems (1848), where it was entitled ‘The heart watching for the morning’, and preceded by a quotation from Cowper*’s The Task (Book VI, lines 861-3): Thy saints proclaim thee King: and in their hearts Thy title is engraven with a pen Dipp’d in the fountain of eternal love. It had six stanzas. The first four are a good example of the 19th-century concept of the church’s mission, using unusual and effective language: Light of the lonely pilgrim’s heart,  Star of the coming...