Folliott Sandford Pierpoint

Folliott Sandford Pierpoint was an English poet, educator, and hymn writer born at Spa Villa, Bath, on October 7, 1835. He was educated at Bath Grammar School and Queens’ College, Cambridge, taking his B.A. in 1857 and later his M.A. He worked for a time as a classics master at Somersetshire College and later lived at several places in southern England, especially Babbacombe, supporting a literary life with occasional teaching.

Pierpoint published poetry before the hymn by which he is chiefly remembered. His collections included “The Chalice of Nature and Other Poems,” issued in 1855, and later volumes bringing together religious and secular verse. Percy Dearmer also credited him with hymns for the canonical hours in “The Hymnal Noted.” These works place him within the devotional and literary world of nineteenth-century Anglicanism rather than identifying him only as the author of a single thanksgiving hymn.

“For the Beauty of the Earth” first appeared in 1864 in the second edition of Orby Shipley’s Communion-centered anthology “Lyra Eucharistica,” under the heading “The Sacrifice of Praise.” The original text was explicitly Eucharistic and longer than most modern versions. Later hymnal editing broadened its use, helping transform Pierpoint’s Communion hymn into a widely used song of thanksgiving for creation, human relationships, the church, and God’s gifts.