Lyrics
And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?
A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought;
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot.
Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be!
Waked by the trumpet sound,
I from my grave shall rise;
And see the Judge with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies!
Public domain hymn text (1763). Words by Charles Wesley.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Charles Wesley wrote 'And Am I Born to Die' in 1763, published as hymn 59 in his 'Hymns for Children,' opening with a question stated so directly, and so starkly, that few other hymns of the period approach mortality with quite the same unflinching bluntness.
Unlike many of Wesley's more triumphant, assurance-filled hymns, this text lingers deliberately in uncertainty and dread before offering any resolution, describing death as flight into 'a world unknown' and 'a land of deepest shade,' language closer to genuine fear than settled hope.
The hymn found its most famous musical setting a little over fifty years later, in 1816, when American shape-note composer Ananias Davisson paired it with a haunting minor-key tune he called IDUMEA, named for the Old Testament region of Edom.
That pairing became a defining piece of the American Sacred Harp tradition, the distinctive shape-note singing practice that developed in the rural American South, where congregations without formal musical training used simplified note shapes to sing complex, often minor-key harmonies from large communal songbooks.
IDUMEA's stark, modal melody, paired with Wesley's equally stark text, gave the combined hymn an intensity unusual even within Sacred Harp singing, and it remains one of the tradition's most recognized and frequently requested pieces at singing conventions today.
The hymn gained renewed, much wider public attention in the twenty-first century after being featured prominently in the soundtrack of the film Cold Mountain, introducing Sacred Harp singing generally, and this piece specifically, to audiences with no prior connection to the tradition.
Its refusal to soften death's genuine strangeness before finally turning toward hope, closing with the promise of the trumpet's sound and the Judge 'with glory crowned,' rather than moving quickly past the fear entirely, has kept the hymn valued among singers who want their music to take mortality as seriously as it actually is.
