James Rowe got a lot of inspiration from where, or what, or whom? To say he was productive while living in New York state, including in the Albany area in 1913 when was 48, would be too modest. With thousands of hymns to his credit, including “In Sorrow I Wandered” (also commonly titled “I Walk with the King”), James evidently had plenty to say that just never seemed to be exhausted. Was it the variety of experiences that motivated his spirit, including the multiple spots on either side of the Atlantic Ocean that he’d lived? And, from what he poetically composed in 1913, were there emotional valleys in which he found himself occasionally, and a resolution to those episodes that he had found? We could also guess that he must have been surrounded by others who appreciated his musical expressions, or he would not have continued filling the hymnals of his era with songs. We’ll have to quiz James and get our answers to the many clues that he’s left us someday in the future.
By his 48th year when he wrote ‘In Sorrow…’, the Englishman James Rowe had lived in many places and worked in a variety of jobs, perhaps partially helping to explain his musical output. Indeed, perhaps someone had suggested and he’d admitted that he’d been a bit of a wanderer – ‘I wandered…’ (v.1). Born in England, he worked in Ireland as a government surveyor for a brief period before emigrating to America in 1890 and working for the railroad in New York for 10 years. Subsequently, he was an inspector for the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society for another 12 years. He apparently began writing hymns only by age 31, and ‘In Sorrow…’ came along some 15-20 years later. Was James reflecting back on his life by 1913, when he penned the words of his three verses? ‘For years…in sin..’ (v.2), he mused, and called out to others ‘near despair…in the lowlands of strife’ (v.3), offering that the answer to this gloom was the refrain ‘I walk with the King’. His hope must have been part of the urge he felt to write, and not just as a hobby. Could it be said that James was reaching back to all the people in the various avenues in which he’d travelled, perchance some who James knew had been afflicted with melancholy, and that the way out was through the God he knew? Perhaps James’ hymns were a kind of therapy for himself and his workmates. James worked with three music publishers in Texas and Tennessee by mid-life, and to produce some 9,000 hymns and other works after a relatively late start in life shows he had become not just a peaceful fount, but a surging river of music and poetry that continued for the remaining years of his life. He evidently had discovered something that drove him to write, and this ingredient in his life endured for decades.
James Rowe was connected to a tireless power source. That’s the bottom line for this fellow who wrote thousands of prescriptions, at least sometimes probably for occasional bouts with dejection. One of James’ predecessors warned his followers that God’s opponent is a roaring lion, seeking to devour us (1 Peter 5:8), signaling that this hungry beast is also rarely fatigued. So, someone might say it’s a contest that I play with my enemy, to see who wins. But, the prospect of being eaten alive hardly sounds like a game, and it doesn’t seem that James thought so either. He chose to keep in touch with the King as much as he did, through songwriting, maybe because he discovered it was a tried and true method for keeping out of the doldrums. Stay outta those blues, and you’ll avoid that beast who’s after you, James would probably say, especially when you’re walking arm-in-arm with the One who made us musical creatures.
See all three verses and the refrain here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/i/w/w/k/iww_king.htm
Some biography of composer here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/r/o/w/e/rowe_j.htm
See more biography on author here: https://hymnary.org/person/Rowe_James
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