"How Can I Keep From Singing?" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Enya | ||||
from the album Shepherd Moons | ||||
B-side | 'S Fágaim Mo Bhaile Oíche Chiúin (Silent Night) |
|||
Released | 1991 | |||
Recorded | 1990 | |||
Genre | New-age | |||
Length | 4:24 | |||
Label | Warner Music | |||
Writer(s) | Robert Wadsworth Lowry | |||
Producer(s) | Nicky Ryan | |||
Enya singles chronology | ||||
|
How Can I Keep From Singing?" (also known by its incipit "My Life Flows On in Endless Song") is a Christian hymn with music written by American Baptist minister Robert Wadsworth Lowry. The song is frequently, though erroneously, cited as a traditional Quaker or Shaker hymn. The original composition has now entered into the public domain, and appears in several hymnals and song collections, both in its original form and with a revised text. Though it is not, in fact, a Quaker hymn, twentieth-century Quakers adopted it as their own and use it widely today.
The first known publication of the words was on August 7, 1868, in The New York Observer, Titled "Always Rejoicing", and, attributed to "Pauline T.", the text reads:
"real" is also used here. These are the words as published by Robert Lowry in the 1869 song book, Bright Jewels for the Sunday School. Here Lowry claims credit for the music, an iambic 87 87 tune with an 87 87 refrain, but gives no indication as to who wrote the words. These words were also published in a British periodical in 1869, The Christian Pioneer, but no author is indicated. Lewis Hartsough, citing Bright Jewels as source of the lyrics and crediting Lowry for the tune, included "How Can I Keep from Singing?" in the 1872 edition of the Revivalist.Ira D. Sankey published his own setting of the words in Gospel Hymns, No. 3 (1878), writing that the words were anonymous. In 1888, Henry S. Burrage listed this hymn as one of those for which Lowry had written the music, but not the lyrics.
Doris Plenn learned the original hymn from her grandmother, who reportedly believed that it dated from the early days of the Quaker movement. Plenn contributed the following verse around 1950, which was taken up by Pete Seeger and other folk revivalists: