Thou disentedst

At the weekend, the Cathedral marked 30 years of girl choristers.  I was first living in Lincoln and attending the Cathedral in the mid-1990s.  I looked out my much used copy of the first CD they produced which I would have bought a liitle later. 

All I could find was the CD case, not the disc itself.  Perhaps I played a track for a service or group at some point, brought the case home, and left the disc behind in whichever machine had been used?

A specially commissioned new setting for George Herbert’s King of Glory, King of Peace was sung at the commemoration service.  I’d always assumed the hymn was the whole of one of his poems, but I was in fact struck by lines which I’d never sung or heard.

The growest soft and moist with tears,

   thou relentest;

and when Justice called for fears,

   thou disentedst.

A quick looking up showed the hymn consists of six of Herbert’s poem’s seven verses, first placed by Robert Bridges in the Yattendon Hymnal in the 1890s (the parish hymnbooks which also introduced All my hope on God is founded, words translated by Bridges).

Perhaps Bridges left out the verse so that the remaining six could be set out in pairs as a three verse hymn?  Perhaps he judged the verse as the least easily comprehended or least felicitous?  The hymn has certainly always felt complete without the verse.

Now I know, I am sorry that the idea of God’s grief was lost (long before twentieth century theological speculation about whether God suffers).  I’m also treasuring the idea that our potential fear of God’s justice is misplaced.