Hymns - christiansquoting.org.uk

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
For most of us, when asked our mind,
Admit we still most pleasure find,
In hymns of ancient days,
In hymns of ancient days.
The simple lyrics, for a start,
Of many a modern song,
Are far too trite to touch the heart;
Enshrine no poetry, no art;
And go on much too long,
And go on much too long.

O, for a rest from jollity
And syncopated praise!
What happened to tranquillity?
The silence of eternity
Is hard to hear these days,
Is hard to hear these days.

Send thy deep hush subduing all
Those happy claps that drown
The tender whisper of thy call;
Triumphalism is not all
For sometimes we feel down,
For sometimes we feel down.

Drop thy still dews of quietness
Till all our strummings cease;
Take from our soul the strain and stress
Of always having to be blessed;
Give us a bit of peace,
Give us a bit of peace.

Breathe through the beats of praise-guitar
Thy coolness and thy balm;
Let drum be dumb, bring back the lyre,
Enough of earthquake, wind and fire,
Let's hear it for some calm,
Let's hear it for some calm.

The Village Choir being a parody of The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-92
(from The Faber Book of Parodies)
Half a bar, half a bar,
Half a bar onward!
Into an awful ditch
Choir and precentor hitch,
Into a mess of pitch
They led the Old Hundred.
Trebles to right of them
Tenors to left of them
Basses in front of them
Bellowed and thundered.
Oh, that precentor's look,
When the sopranos took
Their own time and hook
From the Old Hundred!
Screeched all the trebles here,
Boggled the tenors there,
Raising the parson's hair,
While his mind wandered;
Theirs not to reason why
This psalm was pitched too high:
Theirs but to gasp and cry
Out the Old Hundred.
Trebles to right of them,
Tenors to left of them,
Basses in front of them,
Bellowed and thundered.
Stormed they with shout and yell,
Not wise they sang nor well,
Drowning the sexton's bell,
While all the Church wondered.

Dire the precentor's glare,
Flashed his pitchfork in air
Sounding fresh keys to bear
Out the Old Hundred.
Swiftly he turned his back,
Reached he his hat from rack,
Then from the screaming pack,
Himself he sundered.
Tenors to right of him,
Tenors to left of him,
Discords behind him,
Bellowed and thundered.

Oh, the wild howls they wrought:
Right to the end they fought!
Some tune they sang, but not,
Not the Old Hundred. ANON

A verse may find him who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.
The Church Porch. George Herbert. 1593-1632.
Few men have left behind such purity of character or such monuments of laborious piety. He has provided instruction for all ages, from those who are lisping their first lessons, to the enlightened readers of Malbranche and Locke; he has left neither corporeal nor spiritual nature unexamined; he has taught the art of reasoning, and the science of the stars.
Samuel Johnson: On Isaac Watts (Lives of the Poets)

Sing we the song of high revolt,
Make great the Lord, his name exalt!
Sing we the song that Mary sang,
Of God at war with human wrong.
Sing we of him who deeply cares,
Who still with us our burden shares
He who with strength the proud disowns,
Pulls down the mighty from their thrones.

By him the poor are lifted up,
He satisfies with bread and cup
The hungry men of many lands;
The rich must go with empty hands.

He calls us to revolt and fight,
With him for what is just and right
To sing and live Magnificat
In crowded street and council flat
Fred Kan, The Magnificat, to be sung to the tune of, The Red Flag

Telephone to glory,
Oh the joy divine,
I can fel the current,
Tingling on the line.

Carnal combinations,
Cannot get control,
Of this line to glory,
Anchored in the soul.
Rodeheaver's gospel Songs and Solos was 'The Gospel Telephone'.

Let earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate Deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.

He laid his glory by,
He wrapped him in our clay;
Unmarked by human eye,
The latent Godhead lay;
Infant of days he here became,
And bore the mild Immanuel's name.

See in that Infant's face
The depth of Deity,
And labour while ye gaze
To sound that mystery:
In vain; ye angels, gaze no more,
But fall, and silently adore.

Unsearchable the love
That has the Saviour brought;
The grace is far above
Or man or angel's thought:
Suffice for us that God, we know,
Our God, is manifest below.

He deigns in flesh to appear,
Widest extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know,
For God is manifest below.

Made perfect first in love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see his glorious face:
His love shall then be fully showed,
And man shall then be lost in God. C Wesley

Many Gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honour to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire that they would not attempt to mend them - for they really are not able. None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse. Therefore I must beg the one of these two favours: either to let them stand just as they are, to take them for better for worse; or to add the true reading in the margin, or at the bottom of the page; that we may no longer be accountable either for the nonsense or doggerel of other men.
John Wesley, Preface to a Collection of Hymns for use of the People called Methodists, London, Oct 20, 1779