Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 October 2005 12:52:58
Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace.
Cease not, wet eyes, His mercies to entreat;
to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.
In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
nor let His eye see sin, but through my tears.
Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650)
There were a number of editors in the twentieth century who reacted against the flood of sentimental writing of the nineteenth and followed Robert Bridges and The Yattendon Hymnal in searching for hymns that had both literary and musical qualities. The example was set by Percy Dearmer (1867-1936) in The English Hymnal (1906) where among the hymns on the Passion he placed this exquisite meditation on the tears of the sinner before the Cross by the learned, literary clergyman of the first half of the seventeenth century, Phineas Fletcher. It may well not be suited to general congregational use, but it makes a fine, simple anthem, and the words lead to private prayer.
The English Hymn - 3 (Hyperion) -- one of the CDs that is in regularly played in my car