Lord, it belongs not to my care

Lord, it belongs not to my care. Richard Baxter* (1615-1691). This hymn consists of stanzas from ‘The Covenant and Confidence of Faith’, a poem written ‘To the common Tunes’ (i.e. in Common Metre, though in this case in DCM) printed in Baxter’s Poetical Fragments (1681). If it was written to the ‘common Tunes’, this may indicate that Baxter intended it to be sung; or it may have been just a metrical guide, because it is very long. The poem was in eight 8-line stanzas, beginning ‘My whole, though broken heart, O Lord/ From henceforth shall be thine’. At the end of the poem is the sad note, ‘This Covenant my Dear Wife in her former Sickness subscribed with a cheerful will’ (Margaret Baxter...