Rejoice, ye pure in heart

Rejoice, ye pure in heart. Edward Hayes Plumptre* (1821-1891). This was written in May 1865 as a processional hymn for a choral festival in Peterborough Cathedral. It was first published by Novello, with music entitled PETERBOROUGH, composed by William Henry Monk*. Several other tunes have also been used. It subsequently appeared in the author’s collection Lazarus and other poems, second edition (1865), and was included in the Appendix (1868) to the First Edition of A&M. The size of the building for which it was written necessitated a long hymn, and the 1868 text had eleven stanzas of four lines each. Few hymnals reproduce all of these, and the four line stanzas are sometimes combined...