Williams, William

(1717-1791)

   He was a Welsh poet and hymn writer (bardic name, Pantycelyn), the son of Presbyterian parents, born at Pantycelyn, Carmarthenshire, and educated at a Nonconformist academy near Hay-on-Wye, Breconshire. While there, under the preaching of Howell Harris (principal founder of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism), he became a deacon and curate in the Anglican Church but was never ordained. He allied himself with the Methodists and spent the rest of his life in evangelistic tours as a Methodist preacher, traveling 95,900 miles bringing the Gospel to his country. He published religious poems, treatises, and more than 800 hymns, of which "Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah" is probably his best known. Pantheologia, a Welsh history of the religions of the world, with geographical notes, appeared in installments from 1762 to 1774. He died at Pantycelyn. Some of his hymns/poems: "A View of Christ's Kingdom," "Can I Forget Bright Eden's Grace?" "I Gaze Across the Distant Hills," "Now the Shadows Flee and Vanish," "Ride On, Jesus, All Victorious," "What is the World, and What is Life?"

   Sources: A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. James H. Trott, ed. Cumberland House Publishing, 1999. Anglo-Welsh Poetry, 1480-1980. Raymond Garlick and Roland Mathias, eds. Poetry Wales Press, 1984. AngloWelsh Poetry, 1480-1990. Raymond Garlick and Roland Mathias, eds. Poetry Wales Press, 1993. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Best Loved Religious Poems. James Gilchrist Lawson, ed. Fleming H. Revell, 1933. The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English. Gwyn Jones, ed. Oxford University Press, 1977. The World's Great Religious Poetry. Caroline Miles Hill, ed. Macmillan, 1954. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).