AcWriMo 10: Colworth CM

Since I stumbled across them in the “confirmation” section of the New English Hymnal — in fact the one hymn makes up the entire section — I’ve liked these words by Matthew Bridges (1800-94):

1 My God, accept my heart this day,
And make it always Thine,
That I from Thee no more may stray,
No more from Thee decline.

2 Before the Cross of Him Who died,
Behold, I prostrate fall;
Let every sin be crucified,
And Christ be all in all.

3 Anoint me with Thy heavenly grace,
And seal me for Thine own;
That I may see Thy glorious face,
And worship near Thy throne.

4 Let every thought, and work, and word,
To Thee be ever given;
Then life shall be Thy service, Lord,
And death the gate of heaven.

The editors of NEH add another verse, which is probably still under copyright.

The tune in NEH is St James. It’s…well, it’s not terrible, but it’s unremarkable and unmemorable, I think. It seems as if all the really good Common Metre tunes are already strongly associated with other words: maybe by the time these ones were written the good ones were all gone?

Here’s my attempt at something a little more interesting, if perhaps less serviceable.

AcWriMo 10 — Colworth — PDF
AcWriMo 10 — Colworth — MIDI robots

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA. Here’s more about why. That means you don’t need to give me any money to use this hymn: you just have to make sure I am attributed, and if you make any derivative works (recordings et cetera) they need to also be released under the same license. (Matthew Bridges should also be attributed, but has been dead long enough that the words are public domain.)

That said, if you’ve been enjoying my hymns, I’d love it if you could make a donation to the organ fund at St Andrew’s. We need to raise £25000 to repair the bellows, so far we have £5797.61 which is fantastic but only 22% of the way there.