England's Antiphon

116

Consort is the right word scientifically. It means the fitting together of sounds according to their nature. Concert, however, is not wrong. It is even more poetic than consort, for it means a striving together, which is the idea of all peace: the strife is together, and not of one against the other. All harmony is an ordered, a divine strife. In the contest of music, every tone restrains its foot and bows its head to the rest in holy dance.

117

Symphony is here used for chorus, and quite correctly; for symphony is a voicing together. To this symphony of the angels the spheres and the heavenly organ are the accompaniment.

118

Die of the music.

119

Not merely swings, but lashes about.

120

Full of folds or coils.

121

The legend concerning this cessation of the oracles associates it with the Crucifixion. Milton in The Nativity represents it as the consequence of the very presence of the infant Saviour. War and lying are banished together.

122

The genius is the local god, the god of the place as a place.

123

The Lars were the protecting spirits of the ancestors of the family; the Lemures were evil spirits, spectres, or bad ghosts. But the notions were somewhat indefinite.

124

Flamen was the word used for priest when the Romans spoke of the priest of any particular divinity. Hence the peculiar power in the last line of the stanza.

125

Jupiter Ammon, worshipped in Libya, in the north of Africa, under the form of a goat. "He draws in his horn."

126

The Syrian Adonis.

127

Frightful, horrible, as, a grisly bear.

128

Isis, Orus, Anubis, and Osiris, all Egyptian divinities—the last worshipped in the form of a bull.

129

No rain falls in Egypt.

130

Last-born: the star in the east.

131

Bright-armoured.

132

Ready for what service may arise.

133

The with we should now omit, for when we use it we mean the opposite of what is meant here.

134

It is the light of the soul going out from the eyes, as certainly as the light of the world coming in at the eyes that makes things seen.

135

The action by which a body attacked collects force by opposition.

136

Cut roughly through.

137

Intransitively used. They touch each other.

138

Self-desire, which is death's pit, &c.

139

Which understood.

140

How unpleasant conceit can become. The joy of seeing the Saviour was stolen because they gained it in the absence of the sun!

141

A trisyllable.

142

His garland.

143

The "sunny seed" in their hearts.

144

From tine or tind, to set on fire. Hence tinder.

145

The body of Jesus.

146

Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37. The word time must be associated both with progress and prayer—his walking-time and prayer-time.

147

This is an allusion to the sphere-music: the great heavens is a clock whose hours are those when Jesus retires to his Father; and to these hours the sphere-music gives the chime.

148

He continues his poetic synonyms for the night.

149

"Behold I stand at the door and knock."

150

A monosyllable.

151

Often used for chambers.

152

"The creation looks for the light, thy shadow?" Or, "The light looks for thy shadow, the sun"?

153

Perforce: of necessity.

154

He does not mean his fellows, but his bodily nature.

155

Savourest?

156

The first I ever saw of its hymns was on a broad-sheet of Christmas Carols, with coloured pictures, printed in Seven Dials.

157

They passed through twenty editions, not to mention one lately published (by Daniel Sedgwick, of 81, Sun-street, Bishopsgate, a man who, concerning hymns and their writers, knows more than any other man I have met), from which, carefully edited, I have gathered all my information, although I had known the book itself for many years.

158

The animal spirits of the old physiologists.

159

In the following five lines I have adopted the reading of the first edition, which, although a little florid, I prefer to the scanty two lines of the later.

160

False in feeling, nor like God at all, although a ready pagan representation of him. There is much of the pagan left in many Christians—poets too.

161

Insisting—persistent.

162

Great cloudy ridges, one rising above the other, like a grand stair up to the heavens. See Wordsworth's note.

163

The mountain.

164

These two lines are just the symbol for the life of their author.

165

From the rose-light on the snow of its peak.

166

They all flow from under the glaciers, fed by their constant melting.

167

Turning for contrast to the glaciers, which he apostrophizes in the next line.

168

Antecedent, peaks.