O God, thou art my God alone

O God, thou art my God alone. James Montgomery* (1771-1854). Published in Montgomery’s Songs of Zion (1822) in six 4-line stanzas, originally beginning ‘O God, thou art the God alone’. It is based closely on Psalm 63:1-8, but does not observe the order of the stanzas as in the Scottish Psalter. Montgomery omitted it from The Christian Psalmist (Glasgow, 1825), but included it in his Original Hymns (1853). Its straightforward and skilful rendering of the psalm has been greatly appreciated by hymnbook compilers since that time: O God, Thou art my God alone,  Early to Thee my soul shall cry,A pilgrim in a land unknown,  A thirsty land whose springs are dry. O that it were as it hath been...

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