O Thou who at Thy Eucharist didst pray

O Thou who at Thy Eucharist didst pray. William Henry (‘Harry’) Turton* (1856-1938). First published in Turton’s A Few Hymns written by a Layman between the Festivals of All Saints, 1880 and 1881, a collection of twelve hymns, followed by two further collections with this title in the two following years. This hymn comes from the first Few Hymns, where it was entitled ‘For Unity’. The annotated edition of the Canadian Book of Common Praise (1909) prints a letter from Turton to James Edmund Jones which says that Turton wrote the hymn when he was a young subaltern stationed at the army barracks at Colchester. Turton also had a note on the first singing of the hymn: ‘Used at S. Mary...