Description
Listen to the intermediate piano arrangement of This Is My Father’s World.
This is My Father’s World is a hymn written by Maltbie Davenport Babcock, a minister from New York. The piece was published after his death in 1901 at age 42. The poem was set to music by Franklin L. Sheppard, who apparently did not want to call attention to himself and signed using his initials rearranged as “S.F.L.” Most sources state that Sheppard adapted the music from a traditional English melody.
When Maltbie Davenport Babcock lived in Lockport, he took frequent walks along the Niagara Escarpment to enjoy the overlook’s panoramic vista of upstate New York scenery and Lake Ontario, telling his wife he was “going out to see the Father’s world”. Shortly after his death in 1901 she published a compilation of Babcock’s writings entitled Thoughts for Every-Day Living that contained the poem My Father’s World.
