There is an hour of peaceful rest

There is an hour of peaceful rest. William B. Tappan* (1794-1849). This was Tappan’s first successful hymn, published in a Philadelphia journal, The Franklin Gazette, in 1818. According to Tappan himself  (quoted in JJ, p. 1115) the hymn was introduced to the public by the editor ‘in terms sufficiently flattering to a young man who then certainly lacked confidence in himself.’ It then appeared in Britain and Europe in newspapers and magazines: it was the initial poem in the ‘Sacred Pieces’ section of Tappan’s first book of poems, New England and Other Poems (Philadelphia, 1819). It was the hymn that started Tappan on his hymn-writing career. The first line, and indeed the whole hymn, gives...