More from the Reciter...
Isaac Watts, O God, Our Help in Ages Past (the RPO, linked there, includes three extra verses) and When I Survey the Wondrous Cross: Yes, “Time like an ever-rolling stream” and “my richest gain I count but loss” and, um, “love so amazing”, but really, can we skip to the Divine Songs for Children? “How doth the little busy bee”? “For Satan finds some mischief still/For idle hands to do”? “'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain/"You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again."”? That’s the good stuff.
James Thomson, Rule Britannia: I’d never read this before. It’s ... um ...
Charles Wesley, Jesu, Lover of My Soul: Hey, did you know that John Wesley’s kid brother was in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame? Now, that’s cultural literacy. I interpret from Googling that this hymn is top-rank, but YHB is sufficiently unfamiliar with protestant religious language not to know (a) which lines resound, and (2) which were moderately original to Wesley Minor. “Grace to cover all my sin” sounds familiar to me, as does “Other refuge have I none” and “the shadow of thy wing”, but are they themselves just references to other stuff I’m ignorant of?
Samuel Johnson, Prologue to ‘A Word to the Wise’: This one could be forgotten, for all I care. Not that it’s, you know, bad, just that it’s a sort of phony Shakespeare, and can be bought by the yarde at Ye Olde Poetry Shoppe. “The oblivious grave’s inviolable shade.”
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: This is one of those still assigned to high school students, right? I mean, I think it’s still in all the anthologies. “Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest / some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood”. I can’t say as it does much for me, but then, YHB is a city boy at heart.
OK, enough. At least for the week. Maybe I’ll do more on Monday.
Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile/The short and simple annals of—
-Vardibidian.