The document is a poem about keeping the lights burning along the shore to help guide struggling sailors to safety during dark and stormy nights. It encourages readers to "let the lower lights be burning" so their beams can shine across the waves and rescue poor seamen who are fainting, watching and longing for the lights along the shore, as they try to make the harbor in the angry and roaring darkness.

1. Let the Lower Lights Be Burning

2. Brightly beams our Father’s mercy,
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.
1st Stanza

3. Let the lower lights be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor struggling, fainting
seaman
You may rescue, you may save.
Chorus

4. Dark the night of sin has settled,
Loud the angry billows roar;
Eager eyes are watching, longing,
For the lights along the shore.
2nd Stanza

5. Let the lower lights be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor struggling, fainting
seaman
You may rescue, you may save.
Chorus

6. Trim your feeble lamp, my brother;
Some poor sailor, tempest-tossed,
Trying now to make the harbor,
In the darkness may be lost.
3rd Stanza

7. Let the lower lights be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor struggling, fainting
seaman
You may rescue, you may save.
Chorus