Shouts redoubled from the sky.
Sing the great Jehovah’s praise,
Trophies to His glory raise.
These quotations must suffice for the psalms of the period between the Old and New Versions. Those who are interested in this not very attractive literature will find specimens of the principal British and American writers in Holland’s Psalmists of Britain (1843), and Glass’s Story of the Psalters (1888). When one looks at the two authorized metrical versions, and the many attempts made to supplant them, it is difficult to understand how the Church could so long have clung to the metrical Psalter, and could be so slow to use a hymn-book. Keble says of his own version—‘It was undertaken, in the first instance, with a serious apprehension, which has since grown into a full conviction, that the thing attempted is, strictly speaking, impossible.’ Yet scores have made the same fruitless effort since Keble failed.
Apart from the psalm-versions there are few hymns of the sixteenth century. George Gascoigne (d. 1577), a lawyer, poet, and courtier of Elizabeth’s day, and a descendant of Sir William Gascoigne, the judge who committed Henry V, when Prince of Wales, to prison, wrote a poem entitled ‘Good Morrow,’ from which a good hymn has been made, which is in many of the better school hymnals.
You that have spent the silent night
In sleep and quiet rest,
And joy to see the cheerful light
That riseth in the East;
Now clear your voice, now cheer your heart,