I’m a Pilgrim, I’m a Stranger
121

Text: Hans H. Petersen (1835–1909; LDS)
Music: Leroy J. Robertson (1896–1971; LDS)
Tune name: BOSTON

This plaintive hymn is an acknowledgment of dependence on our Heavenly Father. Most human beings, sooner or later, must endure a time of serious trial. Even if major misfortunes do not befall, our earthly lives are a time of uncertainty, and we may find ourselves longing for the security of the life to come.

The first two verses of this hymn paint a graphic picture of a forlorn outcast, marooned on a rocky shore, surrounded by vapors that overshadow the way to safety. Death seems imminent; this lonely exile fears becoming “the vulture’s prey.” In the third verse, the outcast turns to prayer, asking the Father for safety.

At first glance, it seems odd that a hymn devoted largely to such negative thinking would have a place in our hymnal. But an understanding of the extended figure of speech that underlies the hymn helps to illuminate its meaning. For many centuries, religious writers have expressed the idea that a true Christian must always be a stranger here on earth, because his true home is fixed in heaven.

In Hebrews 11:13–16, the scripture citation at the bottom of the hymn page, Paul expressed this thought: “[The faithful] confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

“For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.

“And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.

“But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly.”

Leroy J. Robertson told J. Spencer Cornwall: “The music to this hymn was written to some other words as a class assignment when this composer was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music [in Boston— thus the tune name] in 1921. It was later adapted to the Petersen words for publication in the 1927 hymnal” (quoted in Stories of Our Mormon Hymns, 259).