Arthur Cleveland Coxe, in his Athanasion and Miscellaneous Poems, edition of 1842, included a 10-stanza poem of four lines each, entitled “Watchwords.” It was written in 1840, at a time when the slavery question was very much to the fore and when the war with Mexico was the following three are by another author. It was first published a Impending. The first two stanzas make up the first stanza in SDAH, but in the Millerite Adventist book Millennial Musings, “a choice collection of hymns designed for the use of Second Advent meetings,” by Joshua V. Himes and Josiah Litch, Boston, 1841.

Coxe was born on May 10, 1818, at Mendham, New Jersey, the son of a prominent Presbyterian minister. He followed his father’s calling and trained for the ministry, but was an ordained Protestant Episcopal. He then added an e to his name, becoming Coxe instead of Cox. He was rector of bishop of Western New York. He had written poetry, but when he was a churches in Connecticut, Maryland, and New York City, and in 1865 became member of the hymnal commission of his own church, he refused to permit any of his poems to be used in the Episcopal Hymnal, 1871. Coxe died July 20, 1896, at Clifton Springs, New York.

The tune, appropriately called THE ALARM, is by an unknown composer, but when played in quick march time, it fits the urgency of the words. The succession of repeated notes in the melody in lines 5 and 6 offers a good contrast to the descending and ascending scale passages in the last two lines.

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.