Lyrics
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity,
Interpreted by love!
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still small voice of calm!
Public domain hymn text (1872). Words by John Greenleaf Whittier.
The Story Behind the Hymn
John Greenleaf Whittier was an American Quaker poet and prominent abolitionist, actively involved for decades in the movement to end slavery in the United States.
His considerable body of poetry addressed both explicitly political and religious subjects, across a long literary career spanning the years before, during, and after the American Civil War.
This hymn’s text was not originally written as a hymn at all. It was instead extracted from a much longer poem titled ‘The Brewing of Soma,’ published in 1872.
That poem primarily describes and criticizes an ancient Vedic Hindu ritual, involving an intoxicating ceremonial drink believed to induce religious ecstasy. It contrasts that ritual’s dependence on artificial intoxication with what Whittier considered the quieter, more genuine spiritual experience available through simple, unadorned prayer and silence — a contrast reflecting Whittier’s own Quaker religious tradition, which places particular emphasis on silent worship and direct, unmediated spiritual experience, rather than ritual or ceremony.
Only the poem’s final several stanzas, describing this quieter alternative form of worship, were later extracted and set to music as the hymn commonly sung today.
They are entirely separated from the poem’s original, considerably more elaborate framing discussion of the ancient Vedic ritual that had originally prompted Whittier’s reflection.
Frederick C. Maker, already discussed elsewhere in this collection as composer of the tune for ‘Beneath the Cross of Jesus’, composed the tune most commonly paired with this text.
Whittier’s own Quaker background differs from the majority Protestant traditions represented by most other hymns in this collection. Despite that, the completed hymn has become widely used across many denominations, specifically for its quiet, contemplative tone and its explicit prayer for ‘the still, small voice of calm’ amid life’s ordinary noise and busyness.
