All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.
Well, I used to enjoy singing it in Assembly, and lots of other hymns; made us feel very much as if we belonged. Try a verse or two of We Plough the Fields and Scatter...
Hand on heart swearing allegiance to the Queen and Brown's British state doesn't do it for me.
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12 comments:
Hatfield, you are a dangerous subversive.
My favourite hymn, though I also love "Hills of the North, Rejoice".
Weird that a quasi-Republican, Scots-dominated government wants to tell the English to swear fealty to the Queen. Except it's to be a child's oath. More fairy-wand waving.
Requiring children to take oaths - and to entities like the Crown that are clearly beyond the understanding of New Labour's law officers (or former law officers). The smaller hgs might well have had a sick note on oath-taking days.
When the hymns were sung in Assembly the Romans and the Jews were released into the corridor, but with the double doors wide open, so we sang along with everyone, if from the wings.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace:
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum
Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum:
Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israel.
The most beautiful - though not sung at Assembly.
if someone had asked me when i was 17 at school to swear allegiance to the queen and declare my britishness i would have spat at them possibly more than metaphorically and would have been proud to do so.
what really scares me if this were in place is what they plan to do with the sane 17 year olds who would feel similarly phlegmatic at the prospect.
collect their names, blacklist them, check them off against religious or racial characteristics?
The Nunc Dimittis is sung at Candlemas, which marks the end of the Christmas season (or Imbolc, if you are a Pagan)
You may also sing this, by Robert Herrick.
Down with the rosemary and so,
Down with the baies and mistletoe,
Down with the holly, ivie all
Wherewith ye deck the Christmas Hall.
Being godless, Godless, you would have been required to affirm (and note taken of your bolshieness in doing that).
Among your many titles, honorifics and names, E of D, Ambivalence must feature.
Yes, Hatters, but "Ambivalence of Dron" does not really strike fear and respect into the general populace, does it?
What if operation "Shock and Awe" had been called operation "Mild surprise and qualified appreciation"?
Ambivalence? mm. I prefer "they have intricately woven, mysterious personalities which sometimes puzzle even them." which is what my Keirsey (KTS)result declares.
I rather like Ambivalence of Dron. We should propose some "whatevers" of Brown, whilst we still have him around to revile. I am not sure, judging by recent pictures, that he is not in fact dead, and that we are witnessing a simulacrum in action. Philip Dick, where are you when we need you.
Hymns. Ancient and Modern. As belted out day after day at prep school and public school. The latter a Methodist foundation, so lots of fine, upstanding and stirring Methodist hymns to be belted out by 350+ male voices. Lord Soper was a governor - he would preach the sermon every Speech Day weekend, and I recall being very taken with his fine fierceness.
Now, I guess I know the first line &/or chorus to some hundreds of hymns, but very few anywhere near to all the verses.
For those in periiil on the sea.
E of D has that far-fallen perfection of excluded angels about him.
Gordon Brown is merely what Stanislav says, though he probably is dead and hasn't noticed.
Robust hymns have chorale qualities; there's a whole cultural narrative (!) about chorales and their function, isn't there Elby? A listen to that most famous of them all and, there instantly, is the lost America, our hope destroyed at the hands of Bush and Greed.
Oh well, off to lay me down.
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