Introduction

Words: Phoe­be H. Brown, 1818.

Music: Wood­stock (Dut­ton) Deo­da­tus Dut­ton, in Am­er­ican Psal­mo­dy, by Deo­da­tus Dut­ton & El­am Ives, Jr., 1829 (🔊 pdf nwc).

If you know where to get a good pic­ture of Dut­ton (head & shoul­ders, at least 200×300 pix­els),

Mrs. Brown was liv­ing at El­ling­ton [Con­nec­ti­cut] with four lit­tle child­ren, in a small un­fin­ished house, a sick sis­ter in the on­ly fin­ished room, and not a place above or be­low where I could re­tire for de­vo­tion.

Not far off stood the fin­est house in the neigh­bor­hood, with a large gar­den. To­wards this the poor wo­man used to bend her steps at dusk, lov­ing, as she writes, to smell the frag­rance of fruits and flow­ers, though I could not see them, and comm­une with Na­ture and God.

This she did, ne­ver dream­ing that she was int­rud­ing, till one day the la­dy of the man­sion turned rude­ly up­on her with Mrs. Brown, why do you come up at ev­en­ing so near our house, and then go back with­out com­ing in? If you want any­thing, why don’t you come in and ask for it? Mrs. B. adds, There was some­thing in her man­ner more than her words, that grieved me. Af­ter my child­ren were all in bed, ex­cept my baby, I sat down in the kitch­en with my child in my arms, when the grief of my heart burst forth in a flood of tears. I took pen and pa­per, and gave vent to my op­pressed heart.

The po­em then wri­tten is head­ed An Apo­lo­gy for My Twi­light Ram­bles, Ad­dressed to a La­dy, Aug. 1818. The orig­in­al has nine stan­zas, the se­cond be­gin­ning, I love to steal awhile away.

Years af­ter, when Net­tle­ton was seek­ing orig­in­al mat­ter for his Vil­lage Hymns (1824), this piece was abridged and al­tered in­to the pre­sent fa­mil­iar form, ei­ther by Mrs. Brown her­self, her pas­tor (Mr. Hyde), or Net­tle­ton. Its po­pu­la­ri­ty was great from the first. In 1853 it was inc­lud­ed in the Leeds H. Bk., and thus be­came known to Eng­lish col­lect­ions. It is found in Ly­ra Sac. Amer., p. 29.

Quoted in Julian, p. 185