offer a purely legal and unpoetical figure, one’s sense of song is entirely obscured.
Yet, when Herbert’s imagery is most matter-of-fact and ungenial, there is a body of thought and there are a certain fitness and a clearness of relation that command admiration.
Verses Must Be Complete in Themselves.
Hymns that have long, intricate sentences extending through two or more verses are impracticable for use in a song service, as the break between the stanzas dislocates the development of the idea. Every verse must be practically complete in itself, no matter what its relation to the development of the general idea of the hymn may be.
Musical Limitations.
It must also be recognized that there are limits to the expression congregational music can give. A poem that is vividly descriptive, or is in part intensely dramatic, cannot be recognized as a practicable hymn, since all stanzas have the same tune, a tune which cannot vary its musical effect to suit the differing stanzas.
Then there are hymns that are too majestic, too glowing, for a hymn-tune composer to write a fitting tune out of the limited resources of musical effects available to him. Such a hymn is that one of Henry Kirke White, of lamented memory:
“The Lord our God is clothed with might,
The winds obey His will;
He speaks, and in His heavenly height