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Play “Earthly Things Vain and Transitory”
Free same-meter accompaniment for Earthly Things Vain and Transitory (David E. Ford): organ, piano or guitar playing the tune OLD 100TH (Louis Bourgeois) in four-part harmony, 2 verses, with the words on screen. Choose the key and speed, add an introduction, project the words on a TV, or practice your own choir part. Made for churches and home groups without a musician.
Sung here to OLD 100TH (Louis Bourgeois), a Long Meter (8.8.8.8) tune — not necessarily the tune usually paired with this text. Any tune in the same meter fits the words.
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- 1How vain is all beneath the skies!
- How transient every earthly bliss?
- How slender all the fondest ties
- That bind us to a world like this!
- The evening-cloud, the morning dew,
- The withering grass, the fading flower,
- Of earthly hopes are emblems true,--
- The glory of a passing hour.
- 2But, though earth's fairest blossoms die,
- And all beneath the skies is vain,
- There is a land whose confines lie
- Beyond the reach of care and pain.
- Then let the hope of joys to come
- Dispel our cares and chase our fears:
- If God be ours, we're traveling home,
- Though passing through a vale of tears.
About this music
OLD 100TH — Louis Bourgeois. Setting: Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalter, 1561.. The score is from the Open Hymnal Project, copied from ccel from Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalter 1561. Words: "Hymnal and Canticles of the Protestant Episcopal Church", 1875, hymn 405.; music and setting are in the public domain. The words above are from the hymnal cited on the Earthly Things Vain and Transitory page.
Played in your browser with instrument sounds from the FluidR3 soundfont by Frank Wen (MIT license). No recordings are used.