O" CHAPTER XIII English Devotional Lyrics-Hymns UR purpose in this survey is to note what might be called literary hymns-hymns written by English authors proper who have done notable literary work along secular lines-by such poets as Milton and Pope rather than by such as Watts, Wesley, and Toplady. Old English poetry may be said to open with a hymn, the historic hymn of Cadmon, author of "The Paraphrase," the oldest English epic. The "Hymn" is a tribute to God, the Creator and Lord, and opens with the lines: Now shall we glorify the guardian of heaven's kingdom, The famous "Death Song" of the historian Bede, as related by Cuthbert, his loving pupil, is of this same hymnic type and purpose. The serious-mindedness of our earliest poetry naturally expressed itself in these devotional forms, even though somewhat crudely and provincially. Beginning at the Elizabethan era, our space will permit us to emphasize only the most striking examples of these hymns of Englishmen of letters, confirming the fact that in England, at least, there may be found what a recent writer has called "the religion of a literary man." The first selections are from the verse of Spenser, the epic poet of the six teenth century, who wrote what are known in English verse as his four hymns-"An Hymne in Honour of Love," "An Hymne in Honour of Beautie," "An Hymne of Heavenly Love," and "An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie." The first two, as he tells us, celebrate earthly, or natural, love and beauty, and the last two, heavenly, these last having been written as a kind of apology for the first. "An Hymne of Heavenly Love" is especially beautiful and full of genuine Christian spirit in its reference to Christ and his mediatorial work. It speaks of the fall of the angels, the creation of man, man's fall and redemption through the Saviour: And that most blessed bodie, which was borne He freely gave to be both rent and torne Of cruell hands, who with despightfull shame At length him naylèd on a gallow-tree, And slew the Just by most unjust decree. Our next great literary hymnologist is Milton, who opened his poetical career with a paraphrase of the 136th Psalm in twenty-four couplets: Let us with a gladsome mind Each of the couplets adds the refrain: For his mercies aye endure, Ever faithful, ever sure. Then follows Milton's great poem "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity;" "A poem," says Knightley, "on which we offer no particular criticism, for it is, in effect, nearly all beauty." Milton thus wrote concerning it to his friend Diodati: "We are engaged in singing the heavenly birth of the King of Peace and the happy age promised by the holy books. This is the gift we have presented to Christ's natal day. On that very morning, at daybreak, it was first conceived." The poem consists of a prologue of four seven-line stanzas, beginning: This is the month, and this the happy morn, That he our deadly forfeit should release, And with his Father work us a perpetual peace. After the prologue, what is called, specifically, "The Hymn" opens, running on through twenty-seven eight-line stanzas, beginning: It was the winter wild While the heaven-born child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; Had dofft her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize; It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour. Of the several stanzas perhaps the thirteenth is the most beautiful and characteristic: Ring out, ye crystal spheres, Once bless our human ears (If ye have power to touch our senses so), And let your silver chime Move in melodious time; And let the base of heaven's deep organ blow; And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort to th' angelic symphony. The hymn throughout is wholly Miltonic, and may be said to set the note for all the later poetry of Milton, which, as a body of verse, is one continuous tribute to the Deity. Next in order we come to Joseph Addison, poet and essayist of the Augustan age, and the author of several hymns of note, some of which are used in the services of Christian worship. The hymns attributed to him, and found in the Spectator, are as follows: His paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm in four stanzas: The Lord my pasture shall prepare, This paraphrase was suggested, as Courthope thinks, by Addison's journeying in the beautiful valley of the Avon. The next hymn opens as follows: When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, the six stanzas of our hymnals being but a part of the original thirteen stanzas. In the Spectator article, at the close of which the full poem is found, Addison dwells on the virtue of gratitude, and wonders that more of our Christian poets have not turned their thoughts this way." Then follows the sublime astronomical hymn, a kind of paraphrase of the opening verses of the 19th Psalm : The spacious firmament on high, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, This reverent hymn is found at the close of a paper (Spectator, 465) in which the author is showing the best means of confirming Christian faith. "One of these," he writes, is "an habitual admiration of the Supreme Being." "The devout man," he adds, "does not only believe but feels there is a Deity," and, in special connection with the hymn, further says, "The Supreme Being has made the best arguments for his own existence in the heavens and the earth." The next hymn, so familiar to the Church, begins: the five stanzas of our collections being a part of the original ten. The hymn was evidently written in view, through the imagination, of a tempesttossed ocean, and the dangers incident thereto, and with the 107th Psalm in mind. "Such an object," he says, "as an ocean in a storm convinces me of God's existence as much as a metaphysical demonstration." The next example is a hymn written, as the author states, in a time of illness, and is a metrical meditation on death: |