The Dying Christian’s Last Farewell

Composer: William Billings
Appears in: The Continental Harmony
Score: PDF
MIDI: midi
Source: LY

I have no idea where the words to this anthem come from, apart from the quote from Job. Billings may well have written them himself. Very similar words appear in Farewell Anthem, in The Sacred Harp and The Southern Harmony, attributed to another Massachusetts composer (and possibly singing-school student of Billings), Jacob French.

My friends, I am going a long journey,
Never to return.
Farewell, fare you well, fare you well, my friends.
And God grant we may meet in that land of harmony,
where the wicked cease from troubling
and where the weary are at rest,
Where pleasures dwell forevermore, and joys that never fade.
My friends, I am summon’d to appear at the great tribunal.
Fare you well, my friend,
And God grant we may meet in that land of harmony,
where the wicked cease from troubling
and where the weary are at rest.
Farewell, farewell, farewell.