3.

(Gerh. VII.)

4.

(Gerh. VIII.)

5.

(Gerh. X.)

Mine, mine was the transgression

But Thine the deadly pain.

Lo, here I fall, my Savior:

'Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favour,
Vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

The joy can ne'er be spoken,
Above all joys beside,
When in Thy body broken
I thus with safety hide.
Lord of my life desiring
Thy glory now to see,
Beside Thy cross expiring
I'd breathe my soul to Thee.

What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest Friend,
For this, Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?

O make me Thine for ever;
And should I fainting be,
Lord let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee.

Be near me when I'm dying,
O show Thy Cross to me:
And to my succour flying,
Come, Lord, and set me free.

These eyes new faith receiving,
From Jesus shall not move;
For he, who dies believing,

Dies safely through Thy love.

Miss Winkworth, 1855, in her Lyra Germanica, 1st Series.

A cento by J. C. Ryle, 1860, in his Spiritual Songs.

Cento from J. Gambold's version, in Reid's Praise Book, 1866.

J. Kelly, 1867, in his Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs.

S. M. Jackson, 1873, 1880, in Schaff-Gilman Lib. of Religious Poetry.

O Head in jest surrounded
By a rude crown of thorn!
O Head, once rich adorned
With highest laud and lays,
But now so deeply scorned,
To thee I lift my praise!

Sir H. W. Baker in Schaff-Gilman Lib. of Religious Poetry.

Miss Margarete Münsterberg, in her Harvest of German Verse, 1916.

Appeared in Crü. Praxis, 1648, no. 1, in 10 stanzas of four lines; thence in Wackernagel: no. 99; Bachmann: no. 1. It was repeated in Crü.-Runge, 1653, no. 1, and also in the Berlin G. L. S.: ed. 1863, no. 1132. This is one of the finest and most popular of German morning hymns, and soon passed into universal use, stanza VIII being best known. Cf. Koch, IV, 595 ff.

English Versions:

1. My Soul, awake and tender.

In full, by J. C. Jacobi, in his Psalmodia Germanica, 1720, p. 33 (1722, p. 104), repeated in pt. I of the Moravian H. Bk., 1754. In the Moravian H. Bk., 1789 and 1886, it begins "My soul awake and render," stanzas 1, 2, 4, 5, being from I; V (lines 3, 4); VI (lines 1, 2); X; VIII.

2. Thy Thanks, my Soul, be raising.

H. J. Buckoll, 1842, p. 28.

3. Wake, my heart, and sing His praises.

E. Massie, 1867.

4. Awake, my heart, be singing.

J. Kelly, 1867, p. 276.

5. Wake up, my heart, elater.

N. L. Frothingham, 1870.

The third hymn of Gerhardt which Jacobi included in his Psalmodia Germanica18 is "Wach auf, mein Herz, und singe." As this song of trust is one of Gerhardt's oldest pieces and may be said to set the key for all the later hymns, it is appropriate that Jacobi should find for it a place in his very limited selection.

The eighteenth century English versions of German hymns invariably abound in extravagant figures. Just why in this instance the translator has chosen to add to the text, where no mention is made of a "lion," the idea of such an animal in the verse:

Nay, when that Lyon's Fury,

is difficult to explain. Possibly to his own mind that creature was more terrifying than Satan himself. Still less pardonable is the distortion in stanza IV:

Du sprachst: Mein Kind, nun liege
Trotz dem, der dich betriege!
Schlaf wol, lasz dir nicht grauen,
Du sollt die Sonne schauen.

Thou saidst: my Child, be easy,
My presence shall release Thee
From frightful Pain and Evil,
In spite of Hell and Devil.

Such alterations of the original, always with the idea of bringing a more terrible picture to the mind of the reader, can be justified on no ground whatever, and accounted for only by saying that the translator probably regarded this as one of the methods of

"resolving all the jarring Discords of Self-love into the heavenly Concords of Mutual Love and Affection. If this be not effected here below, we shall never be worthy to hear the glorious Anthems of the Seraphic Quire above."8a

The singularly inapt paraphrase of the couplet in stanza 3:

Thy gracious Condescension,

Has crossed his sore Intention

appears to slightly better advantage in stanza 7:

In gracious Condescension
Despise not my Intention;
Nor Body, Soul, nor Spirit
Can boast of any Merit.

47 The other two are "Befiehl du deine Wege" and "Wie soll ich dich empfangen?"

48 The Psalmodia Germanica is a collection of 60 hymns from the German.

saConcluding lines of Jacobi's preface to his Psalmodia Germanica, 1722.

Another characteristic of the English versions of this period is the emphasizing of the tortures of Hell and the Devil. Just as in stanza 4 above, we are not surprised to read in stanza 8:

From Satan's woeful doings,

although there is in the German no suggestion whatever of Satan or his deeds. Similarly, the concluding stanza, after the pleasing opening lines, causes something of a shock by its abrupt descent to the grotesque:

Thy Bliss be my Salvation,
My Heart thy Habitation;

Thy Word my Food and Relish,

Till thou destroy'st what's Hellish.

Except for the imperfect rhymes in most of his stanzas Kelly's version is unusually good both as a scrupulously faithful rendering and a successful attempt to keep the simple language and reproduce the characteristic touches of Gerhardt. The line:

The sunlight shall delight thee,

takes on a new significance when compared with

Du sollt die Sonne schauen,

and strophe 8 is particularly well done in that it has so large a predominance of Anglo-Saxon words: