“Here we suffer grief and pain.”

Immediately every child in the room took it up, and sang with might and main: 

     “Here we meet to part again;
     In heaven we part no more.”

We had always thought the familiar words were as old as the Bible itself, and could scarcely believe they had been written by our own old friend.

Soon after that memorable night, the old man began to get feeble; his place in the church and schools was frequently filled by “Young Bilby,” as he was familiarly called; and in 1872, aged seventy-eight, the old parish clerk was gathered to his fathers, and his son reigned in his stead.

The other day a copy of a Presbyterian hymn-book found its way into my house, and there I found “Here we suffer grief and pain.”  I turned up the index which gives the names of authors, wondering if the compilers knew anything of the source from whence it came, and found the name “Bilby”; but who “Bilby” was, and where he lived, is known to very few outside the parish, where the name is a household word, for Mr. Bilby’s son is still the parish clerk of St. Mary, Islington, and through him we learn that his father composed the tune as well as the words of “Here we suffer grief and pain.”

As the hymn is not included in Hymns Ancient and Modern or some other well-known collection, perhaps it will be well to print the first two verses.  It is published in John Curwen’s The Child’s Own Hymn Book: 

“Here we suffer grief and pain;
Here we meet to part again: 
In heaven we part no more.

O! that will be joyful,
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
O! that will be joyful! 
When we meet to part no more!

“All who love the Lord below,
When they die to heaven will go,
And sing with saints above. 

        O! that,” etc.

A poet of a different school was Robert Story, schoolmaster and parish clerk of Gargrave, Yorkshire.  He was born at Wark, Northumberland, in 1795, but migrated to Gargrave in 1820, where he remained twenty years.  Then he obtained the situation of a clerk in the Audit Office, Somerset House, at a salary of L90 a year, which he held till his death in 1860.  His volume of poems, entitled Songs and Lyrical Poems, contains some charming verse.  He wrote a pathetic poem on the death of the son of a gentleman at Malham, killed while bird-nesting on the rocks of Cam Scar.  Another poem, The Danish Camp, tells of the visit of King Alfred to the stronghold of his foes, and has some pretty lines.  “O, love has a favourite scene for roaming,” is a tender little poem.  The following example of his verse is of a humorous and festive type.  It is taken from a volume of his productions, entitled The Magic Fountain, and Other Poems, published in 1829: