On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.
O’er all those wide, extended plains
Shines one eternal day;
There God the Sun forever reigns
And scatters night away.
Filled with delight, my raptured soul
Would here no longer stay;
Though Jordan’s waves around me roll,
Fearless, I’d launch away.
We will rest in the fair and happy land, by and by,
Just across on the evergreen shore,
Sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, by and by,
And dwell with Jesus evermore.
– Samuel Stennett (1787); chorus, Tullius C. O’Kane (1877)