Page:The Power of the Spirit.djvu/16

 MILITARY VIRTUE II a reference to the 'power to guard and guide', but the general tone is illustrated by the second stanza:

And both the tunes, the proper, and Webbe's Veni Sancte Spiritus, fully sustain the dulcet character of the words.

If we take the most famous hymn of all, Cosin's paraphrase of the Veni Creator, the emasculation is far more noticeable. I have often been distressed by the use of this version so systematically at retreats and other religious gatherings, and of the Mechlin tune, whose saccharine quality is quite unlike the marching vigour of most of these modernized plain- song melodies. The Prayer Book, incomparable in its prose, has been attended by Cranmer's ill-luck in the matter of verse; and Cosin, in supplying a greatly superior alternative to the doggerel of the longer version in the ordinal, was not at his best.