“AS DOWN IN THE SUNLESS.”
Thomas Moore, the poet of glees and love-madrigals, had sober thoughts in the intervals of his gaiety, and employed his genius in writing religious and even devout poems, which have been spiritually helpful in many phases of Christian experience. Among them was this and the four following hymns, with thirty-four others, each of which he carefully labelled with the name of a music composer, though the particular tune is left indefinite. “The still prayer of devotion” here answers, in rhyme and reality, the simile of the sea-flower in the unseen deep, and the mariner's compass represents the constancy of a believer.
As, still to the star of its worship, though clouded,
The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea,
So, dark as I roam in this wintry world shrouded,
The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee.
It is sung in Plymouth Hymnal to Barnby's “St. Botolph.”