214
Attolle paullum lumina.
The following hymns are clearly of the very latest date: certainly not earlier than the sixteenth, it may be the beginning of the seventeenth, century. Their intensely subjective character would be a sufficient proof of this: and their rhyme equally shows it. Feminine double rhymes, in almost all mediæval hymns, are reserved for trochaic measures;—their use, as here, in iambics, gives a certain impression of irreverence which it is hard to get over. Notwithstanding the wide difference between these and mediæval hymns, they possess, I think, considerable beauty: and perhaps will be more easily appreciated by modern readers.
Raise, raise thine eyes a little way,
O sinful man discerning
Thy sins, how great and foul are they,
And to repentance turning:
On the Crucified One look,—
Thou shalt read as in a book,
What well is worth thy learning.
