572 Our Lord, His Passion Ended
Francis C. Burkitt, 1864—
A hymn for Whitsuntide.
Francis Crawford Burkitt, born in London, is a scholar of wide repute in England, the author of many linguistic and theological works. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh, Dublin, St. Andrews, and Oxford. Burkitt was, for many years, Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University.
The meter of the hymn is unique in that the second quatrain of each stanza changes from the common lambic (- —) to the Trochaic (— -).
MUSIC. FORTEM VIRILI PECTORE, of unknown origin, has much of the character of a German folk tune. It appears in various editions of the Catholisches Gesangbuch, Strassburg, 1697 and onwards, set to a German version of the words, “Fortem virili pectore.”