20

David’s Charge to Solomon

I

O David’s Son and David’s Lord!
From age to age thou art the same;
Thy gracious presence now afford,
And teach our youth to know thy name.

II

Thy people, Lord, though oft distress’d,
Upheld by thee, thus far are come;
And now we long to see thy rest,
And wait thy word to call us home.

III

Like David, when this life shall end,
We trust in thee sure peace to find;
Like him, to thee we now commend
The children we must leave behind.

IV

Ere long, we hope to be where care
And sin and sorrow never come;
But oh! accept our humble prayer,
That these may praise thee in our room

V

Show them how vile they are by sin,
And wash them in thy cleansing blood;
Oh, make them willing to be thine,
And be to them a cov’nant God.

VI

Long may thy light and truth remain
To bless this place when we are gone,
And numbers here be born again,
To dwell for ever near thy throne.

Where this text comes from

First published in Olney Hymns (1779). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2] [3]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-15.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/john-newton_william-cowper_olney-hymns, book-2.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L24.

Cite this poem

John Newton (1725–1807). “David’s Charge to Solomon.” First published in Olney Hymns (1779). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-newton/davids-charge-to-solomon/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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