[Jesus, and didst Thou Condescend]

Jesus, and didst thou condescend,

When veil’d in human Clay,

To heal the sick, the lame, the blind,

And drive disease away?

And didst thou pity wretched worms                                    

And make the leper whole?

O let thy pow’r and mercy save

My sin diseased Soul.

Didst thou regard the beggars any

And give the Blind to see?                                                               

Jesus thou son of David hear

Have Mercy too on me.

And didst thou pity mortal woe

And sight and health restore?

Pity, O Lord, and heal my soul                                                   

Which needs thy mercy more.

And didst thou save a trembling frame

When sinking in the wave?

I perish Lord, O save my Soul,

For thou alone canst save.                                                                

Sept 8 1769

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 4, pp. 141-42; MS, Steele Collection, STE 10/2, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford.

This is the only poem by Wakeford that was published. It appeared in A Collection of Hymns adapted to Public Worship [generally known as the Bristol Collection], ed. Caleb Evans and John Ash (Bristol: W. Pine, 1769), hymn no. 224, signed ‘Am – a’. Evans and Ash included more than sixty hymns by Anne Steele in their hymnal. Duffield cited Wakeford’s hymn, but guessed the identity of the poet as ‘Mrs. Amelia Wakeford’.  See Samuel Willoughby Duffield, English Hymns: Their Authors and History, 13th ed. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1886), p. 273.