Aspiration and Hope — 199. While Thee I Seek, Protecting Power
Helen M. Williams, 1762-1827
A hymn of faith and trust in God.
Helen Maria Williams, an English Unitarian, lived for some years with her sister who had married a French Protestant. It was during the period of the Revolution and the reign of terror. Being an outspoken republican, she was imprisoned by Robespierre, and was released only after his death in 1794. She was a woman of extraordinary intellectual strength and published many volumes on politics, religion, and literary questions, and finally her collected poems, entitled, Poems on Various Occasions. She lived in England and in France, and the closing years of her life were spent in Holland in the home of a nephew who was pastor of a Reformed Church in Amsterdam.
MUSIC. BRATTLE STREET. For comments on the composer of this tune, Ignace Pleyel, see Hymn 238.