Reginald Heber

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.

Reginald Heber (21 April 1783 – 3 April 1826) was an English bishop, now remembered chiefly as a hymn-writer.

Quotes

Death rides on every passing breeze,
And lurks in every flower;
Each season has its own disease,
Its peril every hour.

• We deny our Lord whenever, like Demas, we through love of this present world forsake the course of duty which Christ has plainly pointed out to us.
  • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 189

• Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of Eternity.
  • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 213

• Remember that every guilty compliance with the humors of the world, every sinful indulgence of our own passions, is laying up cares and fears for the hour of darkness; and that the remembrance of ill-spent time will strew our sick-bed with thorns, and rack our sinking spirits with despair.
  • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 547

Hymns

• Failed the bright promise of your early day?
  • "Palestine", line 113

• No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung,
  Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
  Majestic silence.
  • "Palestine", line 163; "No workman's steel", as recited by Heber in The Sheldonian (15 June 1803); this was altered in later editions to: "No workman’s steel, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung"

• Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
  Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.
  Star of the east the horizon adorning,
  Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
  • "Epiphany", st. 1 (1811)

• By cool Siloam's shady rill
  How sweet the lily grows!
  • "First Sunday After Epiphany", no. 2 (1812)

• The Son of God goes forth to war,
    A kingly crown to gain;
  His blood red banner streams afar:
    Who follows in His train?
  Who best can drink his cup of woe,
    Triumphant over pain,
  Who patient bears his cross below,
    He follows in His train.
  • "The Son of God Goes Forth to War", st. 1 (1812)
  • Lyrics reworked by Kipling in The Man Who Would Be King (1888):
    The Son of Man goes forth to war,
      A golden crown to gain;
    His blood-red banner streams afar—
      Who follows in his train?

• From Greenland's icy mountains,
  From India's coral strand,
  Where Afric's sunny fountains
  Roll down their golden sand.
  From many an ancient river,
  From many a palmy plain,
  They call us to deliver
  Their land from error's chain.
  • "Missionary Hymn", st. 1 (1819)

• What though the spicy breezes
  Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
  Though every prospect pleases,
  And only man is vile.
  • "Missionary Hymn" ("Java" in one version; often misquoted as "Where every prospect pleases"), st. 2 (1819); reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 487

• The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood and stone.
  • "Missionary Hymn", st. 2 (1819)

• Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
  Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee:
  Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!
  God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.
  • "Holy" (1827)

• Beneath our feet and o'er our head
  Is equal warning given:
  Beneath us lie the countless dead,
  Above us is the heaven!
  Death rides on every passing breeze,
  And lurks in every flower;
  Each season has its own disease,
  Its peril every hour.
  • "At a Funeral", No. I (1827)

• Thou art gone to the grave; but we will not deplore thee, Though sorrows and darkness encompass the tomb.
  • "At a Funeral", No. II (1827)

• I see them on their winding way,
  About their ranks the moonbeams play.
  • "The Moonlight March (c. 1828)

• When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.
  • "Hymn for Seventh Sunday after Trinity"; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 746

• Then on! then on! where duty leads,
  My course be onward still.
  • "Journal"; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 207

• Before, beside us, and above
  The firefly lights his lamp of love.
  • "Tour Through Ceylon"; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 273

• With drooping bells of clearest blue
  Thou didst attract my childish view,
  Almost resembling
  The azure butterflies that flew
  Where on the heath thy blossoms grew
  So lightly trembling.
  • "The Harebell"; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 353

Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India (1829)

Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, 1829

• One half of the population was literally armed against the other, and the fury which actuated both was more like that of demoniacs than rational enemies. It began by the Mussulmans breaking down a famous pillar, named Siva's walking staff, held in high veneration by the Hindoos. These last in revenge broke and burnt down a mosque, and the retort of the first aggressors was to kill a cow, and pour her blood into the sacred well. In consequence every Hindoo able to bear arms, and many who had no other fitness for the employment than rage supplied, procured weapons,and attacked their enemies with frantic fury wherever they met them. Being the most numerous party, they put the Mussulmans in danger of actual extermination, and would certainly have at least burned every mosque in the place before twenty-four hours were over, if the sepoys had not been called in.
  • Description of a religious riot at Benares in 1909 during Muharram

• By far the greater number of them were Hindoos, and perhaps one half brahmins any one of them, if he had been his own master, would have rejoiced in an opportunity of shedding his life's blood in a quarrel with the Mussulmans, and of the mob who attacked them, the brahmins, yoguees, gossains, and other religious mendicants, formed the front rank, their bodies and faces covered with chalk and ashes, their long hair untied as devoted to death, showing their strings, and yelling out to them all the bitterest curses of their religion, if they persisted in urging an unnatural war against their brethren and their gods. The sepoys, however, were immoveable. Regarding the military oath as the most sacred of all obligations, they fired at a brahmin as readily as any one else, and kept guard at the gate of a mosque as faithfully and fearlessly as if it had been the gate of one of their own temples. Their courage and steadiness preserved Benares from ruin.
  • Description of the sepoys during a riot at Benares

Disputed

• Thus heavenly hope is all serene,
  But earthly hope, how bright soe’er,
  Still fluctuates o’er this changing scene,
  As false and fleeting as ’tis fair.
  • "On Hope", in Amelia Shipley Heber, The Life of Reginald Heber (New York, 1830) vol. 1, p. 489. However, the same lines appear in Chauncy Hare Townshend's Poems (London, 1821) p. 159