English poem
_The Tune._
by Hezekiah Butterworth (1839–1905)
The little hymn of four stanzas was peculiarly fortunate in meeting the eye of Mr. William B. Bradbury, (1863) and winning his musical sympathy and alliance. Few composers have so exactly caught the tone and spirit of their text as Bradbury did when he vocalized the gliding measures of "He leadeth me."
CHAPTER VI.
CHRISTIAN BALLADS.
Echoes of Hebrew thought, if not Hebrew psalmody, may have made their way into the more serious pagan literature. At least in the more enlightened pagans there has ever revealed itself more or less the instinct of the human soul that "feels after" God. St. Paul in his address to the Athenians made a tactful as well as scholarly point to preface a missionary sermon when he cited a line from a poem of Aratus (B.C. 272) familiar, doubtless, to the majority of his hearers.
Dr. Lyman Abbot has thus translated the passage in which the line occurs:
Let us begin from God. Let every mortal raise The grateful voice to tune God's endless praise, God fills the heaven, the earth, the sea, the air; We feel His spirit moving everywhere, And we His offspring are. He, ever good, Daily provides for man his daily food. To Him, the First, the Last, all homage yield,-- Our Father wonderful, our help, our shield.