Chapter X
Dr. Neale wisely reduced his centos to a plain meter, giving them practical usefulness.
Notes
1“Jesus, the very thought of Thee” (Caswall) or “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts” (Palmer).
2“O sacred Head, now wounded,” translated by James W. Alexander from Paul Gerhardt’s “O Haupt voll Blut and Wunden,” a German version of the Latin hymn above.
3Imagine a poem of such length in the difficult “Leonine hexameter” of which the following translated lines will give an inkling:
“These are the latter times, these are not better times, let us stand waiting!
Lo, how with awfulness, He, first in lawfulness, comes arbitrating.”
4Matthew Arnold described it as “the utterance of all that is exquisite in the spirit of its century.” (Quoted by Gillman, in his Evolution of the English Hymn.)