Richard Baxter (1615–91) wrote this while grieving and gravely ill. An Anglican Puritan turned Nonconformist who had served as a chaplain in Cromwell’s army, he was among the most widely read religious writers in seventeenth-century England, and in 1681 he buried his wife on 7 June and published a book called Poetical Fragments. Its subtitle is one of the finest descriptions of Christian grief ever printed: “The Concordant Discord of a Broken-healed Heart. Sorrowing- rejoycing, fearing-hoping, dying-living.” The title page says it was “Published for the use of the Afflicted.” Our stanzas come from a poem in it titled “The Covenant and Confidence of Faith,” marked “To the common Tunes” so it could be sung, and Baxter added a note at the end in memory of his wife: “This Covenant my Dear Wife in her former Sickness subscribed with a cheerful will.” The hymn takes stanzas 4, 7, and 8, and its opening line originally read “Now it belongs not to my care.” A long life means longer service; a short one means the endless day comes sooner. Either way the singer has already won. The tune ST. FULBERT was written by Henry J. Gauntlett, who called it St. Leofred until the editors of Hymns Ancient and Modern renamed it in 1861 to match a different text.