Music arranged from aAn Italian air

I’m a pilgrim, and I’m a stranger;

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night;

Do not detain me, for I am going

To where the fountains are ever flowing.

Refrain

I’m a pilgrim, and I’m a stranger;

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.

There the glory is ever shining!

O, my longing heart, my longing heart is there;

Here in this country so dark and dreary,

I long have wandered forlorn and weary.

Refrain

I’m a pilgrim, and I’m a stranger;

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.

There’s the city to which I journey;

My Redeemer, my Redeemer is its light!

There is no sorrow, nor any sighing,

Nor any tears there, or any dying.

Refrain

I’m a pilgrim, and I’m a stranger;

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.

     Born on February 15, 1810, in Beaufort, South Carolina the author was Mary Stanley Bunce Dana, the daughter of a Congregational minister. She followed the preaching of William Miller in her search for Bible truth. In 1835, she married Charles W. Dana of New York. In the summer of 1839, they moved to Bloomington (now Muscatine), Iowa. Her husband and young son died the next year, and she returned to South Carolina. In 1851, she married Rev. Robert D. Shindler, a professor at Shelby College, Kentucky, and later Texas. Mary died on February 8, 1883, at Nacogdoches, Texas, where she lived with her son Robert.