Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

300 traditional songs, inc sheet music with full piano accompaniment & lyrics.

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THE Pilgrim FATHERS.
103
THE PILGRIM FATHERS.
We owe "The New England Hymn/' the finest Puritan lyric we have, to an English woman, Felicia Hemans, whose spirit was strongly susceptible to the religious romance and heroism that brought the pilgrims across the ocean in search of a new home. Why has no one set to music Holmes's lyric that closes:
" Yes, when the frowning bulwarks
That guard this holy strand, Have sunk beneath the trampling surge —
In beds of sparkling sand; While in the waste of ocean
One hoary rock shall stand, Be this its latest legend —
Here was the Pilgrim's Laud!"
The music of Mrs. Hemans's song was written by her sister, Miss Browne, and perhaps we owe our possession of this, and her other beautiful airs, to Sir Walter Scott and Moscheles. The latter was visiting Scott, and, upon leaving, promised Sir Walter that he would find a London publisher for " some pretty songs set to music by a Miss Browne, with words by her sister, Felicia Hemans." Moscheles' diary records their publication.
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