The author of the hymn, Henry Francis Lyte, was an Anglican minister. He was a curate in County Wexford from 1815 to 1818. According to a plaque erected in his memory in Taghmon Church, he preached frequently in Killurin Church, about nine miles from there. During that time the rector of Killurin Parish, the Reverend Abraham Swanne, was a lasting influence on Lyte's life and ministry. Later he was vicar of All Saints' Church in Brixham, Devon, England. For most of his life Lyte suffered from poor health, and he would regularly travel abroad for relief, as was customary at that time. There is some controversy as to the exact dating of the text to "Abide with Me". An article in The Spectator, 3 Oct. 1925, says that Lyte composed the hymn in 1820 while visiting a dying friend. It was related that Lyte was staying with the Hore family in County Wexford and had visited an old friend, William Augustus Le Hunte, who was dying. As Lyte sat with the dying man, William kept repeating the phrase "abide with me…". After leaving William's bedside, Lyte wrote the hymn and gave a copy of it to Le Hunte's family. The belief is that when Lyte felt his own end approaching twenty-seven years later at the age of 54, as he developed tuberculosis, he recalled the lines he had written so many years before in County Wexford. The Biblical link for the hymn is Luke 24:29 in which the disciples asked Jesus to abide with them "for it is toward evening and the day is spent". Using his friend's more personal phrasing "Abide with Me", Lyte composed the hymn. His daughter, Anna Maria Maxwell Hogg, recounts the story of how "Abide with Me" came out of that context: Just weeks later, on 20 November 1847 in Nice, then in the Kingdom of Sardinia, Lyte died. The hymn was sung for the very first time at Lyte's funeral. Special thanksgiving services to mark Lyte's bicentenary were held in Taghmon and Killurin churches. While he wrote a tune for the hymn, the most usual tune for the hymn is "Eventide" by William Henry Monk.
Lyrics
The hymn is a prayer for God to remain present with the speaker throughout life, through trials, and through death. The opening line alludes to, "Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent", and the penultimate verse draws on text from, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?": Many hymnals omit certain verses. For example, the compilers of one of the editions of Hymns Ancient and Modern, of which William Henry Monk, the composer of the tune "Eventide", was the original editor, omitted the verse beginning "Thou on my head in early youth didst smile;" for being too personal.
Tune
The hymn tune most often used with this hymn is "Eventide" composed by William Henry Monk in 1861. Alternative tunes include:
The principal theme of the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9 is often noted for their similarity to Monk's Eventide. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed an orchestral prelude on the tune for the Hereford Festival of 1936. The hymn was also set to music around 1890 by the American composer Charles Ives, and was published in his collection Thirteen Songs in 1958, four years after his death.
Thelonious Monk recorded an instrumental version of "Abide with Me" with his jazz septet as the first track of the 1957 album Monk's Music. In 2006, two different takes of the recording were released on The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings, an anthology of Thelonious Monk's work with John Coltrane.
Doris Day recorded this song on her 1962 album You'll Never Walk Alone.
Hayley Westenra recorded the hymn on her third international album, Treasure, and performed it live at various sporting events, including the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final in August 2009.
An instrumental version appears on the 2009 David Friesen release, Vanishing the Darkness.
In 2013, Joe McElderry and the Royal Mail Choir recorded the song, and it was released as a charity single on 14 April 2013, raising money for Prostate Cancer UK. This version reached number 19 on the UK Indie Chart.
Alex Sharpe recorded her version of the hymn on her 2014 album, Be Still My Soul.
The Inspirational Choir recorded this song for their debut album Sweet Inspiration
Audrey Assad recorded her version in her album, Inheritance.
In sport
Since the 1927 FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Cardiff City, the first and last verses of the hymn are traditionally sung at the FA Cup Final about 15 minutes before the kick-off of the match. It has also been sung prior to the kick-off at every Rugby League Challenge Cup Final since 1929.
In film and television
The hymn, in full or in part, is often used in a range of films and television programmes. In an early scene from Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, the character Peter quotes the hymn after his wife declares that she finds him physically repulsive—seeming to imply that no matter how much they hate each other, they are stuck married forever.
In literature
References in literature include George Orwell's Burmese Days. The Victorian Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, according to Francis Turner Palgrave, on reading "Abide with Me", "was deeply impressed by its solemn beauty; remarking that it wanted very little to take rank among the really perfect poems of our language."
