As Pants the Hart for Cooling Streams
Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady · 1696 · tune MARTYRDOM
Key of F · public domain
Words
When heated in the chase,
So longs my soul, O God, for Thee,
And Thy refreshing grace.
My thirsty soul doth pine;
O when shall I behold Thy face,
Thou Majesty divine?
Hope still, and thou shalt sing
The praise of Him who is thy God,
Thy health's eternal spring.
The God whom we adore,
Be glory, as it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.
The story
Tate and Brady produced the New Version of the Psalms of David in 1696, and for the next two hundred years this is what most English parishes actually sang. Psalm 42 is not a comfortable psalm. The writer is far from the temple, taunted with where is thy God, and remembering better days makes it worse rather than better. What Tate and Brady keep is the turn in the middle, where the psalmist stops addressing God and starts addressing himself: why restless, why cast down, my soul? Hope still. That is a man arguing with his own despair and refusing to let it have the last word. The psalm does not say the feeling was wrong. It says hope anyway.
Chords in F
In the app you can move this to any key and it works out the capo for you.
Common questions
Who wrote As Pants the Hart for Cooling Streams? Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady wrote the words in 1696.
What tune is it sung to? MARTYRDOM, set here in the key of F.
What scripture is it built on? Psalm 42.
Is As Pants the Hart for Cooling Streams free to use in church? Yes. The words are public domain, which means any church may sing them, print them in a bulletin, put them on a screen or record them, without asking permission and without paying anyone.
The psalm it came from
As Pants the Hart for Cooling Streams is Psalm 42 set to a tune. The psalm itself is here in full — King James, Berean Standard and Reina-Valera side by side, with a note on what it is doing and where it sits in the book.
Themes
Psalms · Longing · Hope