I am a poor wayfaring stranger,
While traveling through this world of woe.
Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger
In that bright world to which I go.
I’m going there to see my Father;
I’m going there no more to roam.

Refrain

I’m only going over Jordan,
I’m only going over home.

I know dark clouds will gather round me;
I know my way is rough and steep.
But golden fields lie out before me
Where God’s redeemed shall ever sleep.
I’m going there to see my mother,
She said she’d meet me when I come.

Refrain

I’ll soon be free from every trial,
My body sleep in the churchyard;
I’ll drop the cross of self denial
And enter on my great reward.
I’m going there to see my Savior,
To sing His praise forevermore.

Refrain

A pilgrim through this lonely world
The blessèd Savior passed;
A mourner all His life was He,
A dying Lamb at last,
A dying Lamb at last.

That tender heart that felt for all,
For all its life blood gave;
It found on earth no resting place
Save only in the grave,
Save only in the grave.

Such was our Lord; and shall we fear
The cross with all its scorn?
Or love a faithless, evil world,
That wreathed His brow with thorn,
That wreathed His brow with thorn?

No! facing all its frowns or smiles,
Like Him, obedient, still,
We homeward press through storm or calm
To Zion’s blessèd hill,
To Zion’s blessèd hill.

By faith His boundless glories there
Our wondering eyes behold;
Those glories which eternal years
Shall never all unfold;
Shall never all unfold.

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.