This Is My Father's World

DESCRIPTION: "This is my Father's world, And to my listening ears All nature sings, and round me rings The music of the spheres." The song praises the nature that the Father created: "The Lord is King: let the heavens ring! God reigns; let earth be glad!"
AUTHOR: Words: Maltbie D(avenport) Babcock (1858-1901) (source: hymnary.org; Johnson) / Music: see NOTES
EARLIEST DATE: 1901 (hymnary.org)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad campsong
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 331, "This Is My Father's World" (notes only)
ADDITIONAL: Charles Johnson, One Hundred and One Famous Hymns (Hallberg, 1982), pp, 112-113, "This Is My Father's World" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [382 words]: Apparently camps with a strong religious bent like this because of the nature references. (It reportedly was inspired by an actual nature walk.) I can't help but feel that it's sexist, even though there is no question but that the New Testament refers to the leading person of the Trinity as "the Father."
According to Johnson, p. 112, author Maltbie Babcock was born in Syracuse, New York, and attended Syracuse University and Auburn Theological Seminary. He was ordained into the Presbyterian church, serving as a pastor for the last fifteen years of my life, dying while on a trip to Italy.
Interestingly, although Johnson says the tune of this is by Franklin L. Sheppard (who published this and other Babcock hymns in Alleluia), hymnary.org does not mention this attribution. In fact the situation is rather complex; Babcock did write his own tunes (Julian p. 1608), but this piece is an exception, since it wasn't intended as a hymn and was not published as one in Babcock's lifetime: the common text is part of a longer Babcock poem (16 stanzas, according to Reynolds, p. 225) found in Babcock's Thoughts for Everyday Living which was not published until Babcock was dead (Stulkin, p. 559).
McKim, p. 293, says Sheppard extracted the lyrics and set a tune, which he thought he had learned from his family, so he called it an English melody. McKim calls this melody "Terra Beata." If it is based on anything, it is probably "Rusper," which is associated with William Chatterton Dix. However Reynolds, p. 226, says that Sheppard thought he was using an existing tune, but that it was in fact original; Reynolds calls the tune "Terra Patris." (Stulkin, p. 559, mentions both names but prefers "Terra Patris.") The likeliest explanation is that Sheppard mis-remembered "Rusper" and produced this instead.
Although Babcock wrote a number of hymns, this is the only one that is at all familiar to me, although "Back of the Loaf the Snowy Flour" is also in the Index.
Julian, p. 1608, says that Dr. C. E. Robinson published a biography of Babcock in 1904 (though all the sources I checked all seemed to have the same details of Babcock's life; clearly they were all reading each other, with no more than one of them reading the biography). Some of Babcock's sermons were also published. - RBW
Bibliography

Julian: John Julian, editor, A Dictionary of Hymnology, 1892; second edition 1907 (I use the 1957 Dover edition in two volumes)
McKim: LindaJo H. McKim, Presbyterian Hymnal Companion, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993
Reynolds: William Reynolds, Companion to Baptist Hymnal, Broadman Press, 1976
Stulken: Marilyn Kay Stulken, Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship, Fortress Press, 1981

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