This will be the penultimate entry in my series Then Sings My Soul: The Hymns of My Youth. This week’s feature has been called the greatest country song ever written, and illustrates how the refreshing of old hymns can create a new “standard” song for a new generation of worshippers — and, in fact, for several generations which follow them. In 1907, Ada R. Ha­ber­shon wrote the lyrics to “Will the circle be unbroken”, with music contributed by Charles H. Ga­br­iel. Her version of the hymn lyrics follow, and if you’re like me, you’ve possibly heard them before, at least not that you recall… though they do have a strange familiarity. A review of the refrain makes me think I’ve heard this version before, and a reading of the verses fills out a slightly stronger sense of the Christian hope that undergirds both versions. The overwhelming sense of (particularly the familiar) hymn is almost more akin to sentimentality than faith, but it touches the universal theme of loss, to which we can all relate on some level. The original version in particular remembers the times of youth before the loss of family members and other saints occurred.