England's Antiphon. George MacDonald

early aids and ever guides:

        Who can this city take?

        When nations go against her bent,

          And kings with siege her walls enround;

        The void of air his voice doth rent,

          Earth fails their feet with melting ground.

          To strength and keep us sound,

        The God of armies arms;

          Our rock on Jacob's God we found,

        Above the reach of harms.

        O come with me, O come, and view

          The trophies of Jehovah's hand!

        What wrecks from him our foes pursue!

          How clearly he hath purged our land!

          By him wars silent stand:

        He brake the archer's bow,

          Made chariot's wheel a fiery brand,

        And spear to shivers go.

        Be still, saith he; know, God am I;

          Know I will be with conquest crowned

        Above all nations—raiséd high,

          High raised above this earthly round.

          To strength and keep us sound,

        The God of armies arms;

          Our rock on Jacob's God we found,

        Above the reach of harms.

      "The God of armies arms" is a grand line.

      Now let us have a hymn of Nature—a far finer, I think, than either of the preceding: Praise waiteth for thee.

      PSALM LXV

        Sion it is where thou art praiséd,

          Sion, O God, where vows they pay thee:

        There all men's prayers to thee raiséd,

          Return possessed of what they pray thee.

        There thou my sins, prevailing to my shame,

        Dost turn to smoke of sacrificing flame.

        Oh! he of bliss is not deceivéd, disappointed.

          Whom chosen thou unto thee takest;

        And whom into thy court receivéd,

          Thou of thy checkrole65 number makest:

        The dainty viands of thy sacred store

        Shall feed him so he shall not hunger more.

        From thence it is thy threat'ning thunder—

          Lest we by wrong should be disgracéd—

        Doth strike our foes with fear and wonder,

          O thou on whom their hopes are placéd,

        Whom either earth doth stedfastly sustain,

        Or cradle rocks the restless wavy plain.

        Thy virtue stays the mighty mountains, power.

          Girded with power, with strength abounding.

        The roaring dam of watery fountains the "dam of fountains"

          Thy beck doth make surcease her sounding. [is the ocean.

        When stormy uproars toss the people's brain,

        That civil sea to calm thou bring'st again. political, as opposed

                                                                    [to natural.

        Where earth doth end with endless ending,

          All such as dwell, thy signs affright them;

        And in thy praise their voices spending,

          Both houses of the sun delight them–

        Both whence he comes, when early he awakes,

        And where he goes, when evening rest he takes.

        Thy eye from heaven this land beholdeth,

          Such fruitful dews down on it raining,

        That storehouse-like her lap enfoldeth

          Assuréd hope of ploughman's gaining:

        Thy flowing streams her drought doth temper so,

        That buried seed through yielding grave doth grow.

        Drunk is each ridge of thy cup drinking;

          Each clod relenteth at thy dressing; groweth soft.

        Thy cloud-borne waters inly sinking,

          Fair spring sprouts forth, blest with thy blessing.

        The fertile year is with thy bounty crowned;

        And where thou go'st, thy goings fat the ground.

        Plenty bedews the desert places;

          A hedge of mirth the hills encloseth;

        The fields with flocks have hid their faces;

          A robe of corn the valleys clotheth.

        Deserts, and hills, and fields, and valleys all,

        Rejoice, shout, sing, and on thy name do call.

      The first stanza seems to me very fine, especially the verse, "Return possessed of what they pray thee." The third stanza might have been written after the Spanish Philip's Armada, but both King David and Sir Philip Sidney were dead before God brake that archer's bow.66 The fourth line of the next stanza is a noteworthy instance of the sense gathering to itself the sound, and is in lovely contrast with the closing line of the same stanza.

      One of the most remarkable specimens I know of the play with words of which I have already spoken as common even in the serious writings of this century, is to be found in the next line: "Where earth doth end with endless ending." David, regarding the world as a flat disc, speaks of the ends of the earth: Sidney, knowing it to be a globe, uses the word of the Psalmist, but re-moulds and changes the form of it, with a power fantastic, almost capricious in its wilfulness, yet causing it to express the fact with a marvel of precision. We see that the earth ends; we cannot reach the end we see; therefore the "earth doth end with endless ending." It is a case of that contradiction in the form of the words used, which brings out a truth in another plane as it were;—a paradox in words, not in meaning, for the words can bear no meaning but the one which reveals its own reality.

65

The list of servants then kept in large houses, the number of such being far greater than it is now.

66

There has been some blundering in the transcription of the last two lines of this stanza. In the former of the two I have substituted doth for dost, evidently wrong. In the latter, the word cradle is doubtful. I suggest cradled, but am not satisfied with it. The meaning is, however, plain enough.