Page:The seven great hymns of the mediaeval church - 1902.djvu/75

Rh A long lit might be framed of the great who have avowed for it a upreme admiration, excelling that yielded to any other compoition of its kind. And uch a roll would contain the names of men of different countries as of different creeds; of oldiers, tatemen and poets; of hitorians, Churchmen, and compoers, upon whoe lips it has hovered, and in whoe works it has been engraved. Mozart, Haydn, Goethe, Schlegel, Johnon, Dryden, Scott, Milman, and Jeremy Taylor would be among thee names.

This lyric, which is the greatet of hymns, nevertheles is cat in the implet of forms. Beginning with an exclamation from the Scriptures, it continues through its few tanzas the addres of a ingle actor upon a ingle ubject. Its meaure could not be more artles, nor its tanzas more imple. The augut language in which it is clothed, it has bent into the form of rhyme, and this rhyme is of a kind which is aid to be wanting in dignity, and better adapted to comic than to elevated vere. Yet it commands the homage of the Englihman, the German, the Italian, and the modern Greek;