Lyrics
This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.
This is my Father’s world,
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.
This is my Father’s world:
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
Why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let the earth be glad!
Public domain hymn text (1901). Words by Maltbie D. Babcock.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Maltbie D. Babcock was an American Presbyterian minister serving a congregation in Lockport, New York. He reportedly took regular early morning walks along the escarpment overlooking Lake Ontario before beginning his day’s pastoral work, sometimes telling his wife he was going out ‘to see the Father’s world.’
The poem underlying this hymn grew out of those regular walks. It was originally written as one of a longer set of poems, rather than as a hymn intended for congregational singing.
Babcock’s own life ended suddenly and relatively young. He died in 1901, at only forty-two, of a fever contracted while traveling in the Middle East, during what was intended as a restorative trip abroad.
This poem, along with the rest of his set of nature poems, was published posthumously that same year, by his widow. Babcock himself never saw his best-known work reach print, or become a widely sung hymn.
The published poem originally ran to sixteen stanzas, considerably longer than the two or three commonly printed in modern hymnals.
Franklin L. Sheppard, a friend of Babcock’s from his college years, later selected and condensed the poem into the shorter hymn text familiar today, setting it to a traditional English folk melody, rather than composing an entirely new tune.
The hymn’s confident, untroubled declaration that the natural world itself continuously speaks of God’s presence — ‘in the rustling grass I hear Him pass’ — reflects Babcock’s own reported daily practice of finding spiritual renewal in ordinary outdoor observation before the start of his pastoral duties each day.
That practice was cut short by his own sudden and unexpected early death, only shortly after these particular poems were completed.
