Long did I toil, and knew no earthly rest

Long did I toil, and knew no earthly rest. Henry Francis Lyte* (1793-1847). First published in Lyte’s Poems chiefly Religious (1833), with the title ‘My Beloved is mine, and I am His’ and the note ‘Imitated from Quarles’. Percy Dearmer* thought that this referred to John Quarles*, and in SofPE he ascribed the hymn to ‘John Quarles, 1624-65, and H.F. Lyte’. Lyte’s own title, however, suggests that he was imitating one of the Emblemes (1634-35) of Francis Quarles* (father of John). In Emblemes Book V, the emblematic poem on ‘Canticles II.16’ is headed ‘My beloved is mine and I am his; He feedeth among the Lillies’. This is a quotation from The Song of Solomon 2: 16 (called by Quarles...