*

I have thus traced--how slightly!--the course of the religious poetry of
England, from simple song, lovingly regardful of sacred story and legend,
through the chant of philosophy, to the full-toned lyric of adoration. I
have shown how the stream sinks in the sands of an evil taste generated
by the worship of power and knowledge, and that a new growth of the love
of nature--beauty counteracting not contradicting science--has led it by
a fair channel back to the simplicities of faith in some, and to a holy
questioning in others; the one class having for its faith, the other for
its hope, that the heart of the Father is a heart like ours, a heart that
will receive into its noon the song that ascends from the twilighted
hearts of his children.

Gladly would I have prayed for the voices of many more of the singers of
our country's psalms. Especially do I regret the arrival of the hour,
because of the voices of living men and women. But the time is over and
gone. The twilight has already embrowned the gray glooms of the cathedral
arches, and is driving us forth to part at the door.

But the singers will yet sing on to him that hath ears to hear. When he
returns to seek them, the shadowy door will open to his touch, the
long-drawn aisles receding will guide his eye to the carven choir, and
there they still stand, the sweet singers, content to repeat ancient
psalm and new song to the prayer of the humblest whose heart would join
in England's Antiphon.

THE END.

[1] The rhymes of the first and second and of the fourth and fifth lines
throughout the stanzas, are all, I think, what the French call feminine
rhymes, as in the words "sleeping," "weeping." This I think it better
not to attempt retaining, because the final unaccented syllable is
generally one of those _e_'s which, having first become mute, have since
been dropped from our spelling altogether.

[2] For the grammatical interpretation of this line, I am indebted to Mr.
Richard Morris. _Shall_ is here used, as it often is, in the sense of
_must_, and _rede_ is a noun; the paraphrase of the whole being, "_Son,
what must be to me for counsel?_" "_What counsel must I follow?_"

[3] "Do not blame me, it is my nature."

[4] _Mon_ is used for _man_ or _woman_: human being. It is so used in
Lancashire still: they say _mon_ to a woman.

[5] "They weep quietly and _becomingly_." I think there must be in this
word something of the sense of _gently,-uncomp