Phillip Bliss 1871
I learned this from Kendall Morse in the 1960s – it was popular along this coast a generation before mine. We've heard three different stories of how this song came to be, all involving a ship disaster on the Great Lakes. Phillip Bliss was a well-known evangelist who heard one of these stories and wrote the song.
The January Men and Then Some
Brightly beams out father's mercy
From the Lighthouse evermore
But to us he gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore
Let the lower lights be burning
Send their gleam across the wave
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You man rescue, you may save
Dark the night of sin has settled
Loud the angry billows roar
Eager eyes are watching, longing
For the lights along the shore
Trim your feeble lamp, my brother
Some poor sailor, tempest-tossed
Trying now to reach the harbor
In the darkness may be lost
Let the Lower Lights Be Burning is recorded on the album In Concert