The shining constellations join and say,
Alleluya!

Ye clouds that onward sweep,

Ye winds on pinions light,

Ye thunders echoing loud and deep,

Ye islands wildly bright,

In sweet content unite,
Alleluya!

J. M. Neale, from "The Sequence of
Notker," in the "English Hymnal," No. 974.

Two of the best and most poetical hymns of to-day, "Jerusalem, My Happy Home" and "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem," did not come into the hymn-books generally until the second quarter of the last century, though they had been waiting in manuscript since the sixteenth century, till there was a call for them.

The poem is printed in full in Julian's Dictionary, page 580, from the manuscript in the British Museum. The title is "A Song Made by F. B. P. and to be Sung to the Tune of Diana." Stanzas besides the familiar ones in the two centos are:

In thee noe sicknesse may be seene,
Noe hurt, noe ache, nor sore,
There is noe death, nor uglie devill,
There is life forevermore.

Noe dampishe miste is seene in thee
No cloud, nor darksome night.
There everie soule shines as the sunne,
There God himself giues light.

Thy turrettes and thy pinacles

With carbuncles doe shine.

Thy verie streetes are paved with gould, Surpassinge cleare and fine.

Within thy gates nothinge doeth come That is not passing cleane.

No spider's web, no durt, noe dust

No filthe may there be seene.

We that are here in banishment

Continuallie doe moane.

We sigh and sobbe, we weepe and weale, Perpetually we groane.

But there they live in such delight
Such pleasures and such play

As that to them a thousand yeares
Doth seeme as yeaster day.

Thy viniardes and thy orchardes are
Most beautifull and faire

Full furnished with trees and fruits
Most wonderful and rare.

There is nectar and ambrosia made, There is muske and civette sweete. There manie a faire and daintie drugge Are trodden under feete.

There cinamon and there sugar groes,
There norde and balme abound.

What tongue can tell or hart conceiue

The ioies that there are found.

Quyt through the streetes with silver sound The flood of life doth flowe

Upon whose banks on everie syde

The wood of life doth growe.

There David standes with harp in hand
As Maister of the Queere.

Ten thousand times that man were blest
That might his musicke hear.

A somewhat later version has this stanza:

There be the prudent Prophets all,
The apostles six and six;

The glorious martyrs on a row

And Confessors betwixt.

The two hymns from this poem were especially pleasing to persons of high church tendencies. Some of the hymn-books have printed most of the stanzas, including the "spider's web" one. Nearly all the hymn-books to-day include at least one hymn from the poem.

In a critical paper on "Hymns Ancient and Modern" in "The Saturday Review" for February 2, 1901, Mr. F. H. Balfour condemns this sort of hymn as being crassly materialistic and absurd. He thinks that such lavish use of gold and jewelry would make a city very glaring and unpleasant. The idea of gold- and silver-winged angels is illogical; the wings would not fold and unfold well, and they would be too heavy to fly with. One can hardly plead in defense of that phase of the hymn without in turn being absurd. The author of the hymn did not mean real gold. It is a figure of speech for the idea of splendid and fortunate estate and great happiness. Gold hair does not mean wire hair. Shakspere's "golden lads and girls" did not mean metal creatures. Of course the figures of the celestial city with walls of precious stones and gates of single pearls show an Oriental and naïve lavishness of imagination. But after all, gold is a con

ventional word for splendor; and the idea of the hymn is to suggest even more richness than the words imply. These materials, gold, palaces, and jewels are among what Edmund Burke calls in his treatise "On the Sublime and Beautiful," section vii, "those things in nature that raise love and astonishment in us." The names of these objects, Burke says, by long association with abstract ideas, such as, for example, ideas of splendor and happiness, gain great power to call forth those ideas. Further, if a number of such objects are named together they have a cumulative power for expressing the abstract idea. This section of Burke's theory of esthetics reads like a special vindication of this poem. I do not see how a poet could even contrive a figure of speech that was not radically of material substance. If the figures of this poetry suggest pawn-shops rather than supernal happiness, there is little to be said. Poetry does not with Bottom the Weaver stop to explain that the lion is not really a lion and that golden wings are not really gold.

The charge against hymns of this kind that they are world-weary, and that the singer of them is too much occupied gazing toward the shade of the trees to do his work in the Lord's harvest field, is a more thoughtful criticism.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the hymn, having by that time defined itself as a distinct type of English verse, has more and more come to its place as a recognized literary form; and a large