$96. LATIN HYMNS AND HYMNISTS. 429
The following is a felicitous version by an American divine.1
Come, O Spirit ! Fount of grace ! O ! thrice blessed light divine !
From thy heavenly dwelling-place Come, the spirit's inmost shrine
One bright morning beam iin- With Thy holy presence fill ;
part : Of Thy brooding love bereft,
Come, O Father of the poor; Naught to hopeless man is left; Come, O Source of bounties sure ; Naught is his but evil still.
Come, 0 Sunshine of the heart !
Comforter of man the best ! Wash away each earthly stain,
Making the sad soul thy guest; Flow o'er this parched waste again,
Sweet refreshing in our fears, Heal the wounds of conscience
In our labor a retreat, sore,
Cooling shadow in the heat, Bind the stubborn will within,
Solace in our falling tears. Thaw the icy chains of sin,
Guide us, that we stray no more.
Give to Thy believers, give, In Thy holy hope who live,
All Thy sevenfold dower of love ; Give the sure reward of faith, • Give the love that conquers death,
Give unfailing joy above.
NOTKER, surnamed the Older, or Balbulus (" the little Stam merer/7 from a slight lisp in his speech), was born about 850 of a noble family in Switzerland, educated in the convent of St. Gall, founded by Irish missionaries, and lived there as an humble monk. He died about 912, and was canonized in 1512.2
("Come, O Spirit, Lord of grace1'); Neale, 1851 ("Come, Thou Holy Para clete"); Kay Palmer, 1858 ("Come, Holy Ghost, in love"); Morgan ("Come, Holy Spirit, nigh"). Cornp. Odenheimer and Bird, I c. 181-190; German versions by Witzel, 1541; the Bohemian Brethren, 1544; Mart. Moller, 1584; Mart. Behm, 1606. See Koch, I. 100.
1 Dr. E. A. Waehburn, late rector of Calvary Church, New York, a highly accomplished scholar (d. 1881). The version was made in 1860 and published in " Voices from a Busy Life," N. Y. 1883, p. 142.
2 Comp. on Notker the biography of Ekkehard ; Daniel V. 37 sqq. ; Koch I. 94 sqq. ; Meyer von Knonau, Lebensbild des heil. Notker von St. Gallen, and his article in Herzog2 X. 648 sqq. (abridged in Schaff-Herzog IL 1668) ; and
430 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
He is famous as the reputed author of the Sequences (Sequentice), a class of hymns in rythmical prose, hence also called Proses (Prosce). They arose from the custom of prolonging the last syllable in singing the Allelu-4a of the Gradual, between the Epistle and the Gospel, while the deacon was ascending from the altar to the rood-loft (organ-loft), that he might thence sing the Gospel. This prolongation was called jubilatio or jubilus, or laudeSy on account of its jubilant tone, and sometimes sequentia (Greek dxoAov&la), because it followed the reading of the Epistle or the Alleluia. Mystical interpreters made this unmeaning prolongation of a mere sound the echo of the jubi lant music of heaven. A further development was to set words to these notes in rythmical prose for chanting. The name sequence was then applied to the text, and in a wider sense also to regular metrical and rhymed hymns. The book in which Sequences were collected was called Sequentiale.1
Notker marks the transition from the unmeaning musical se quence to the literary or poetic sequence. Over thirty poems bear his name. His first attempt begins with the line
" Laudes Deo concinat orbis ubique totus" More widely circulated is his Sequence of the Holy Spirit :
" Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia."
"The grace of the Holy Spirit be present with us"2
The best of all his compositions, which is said to have been in spired by the sight of the builders of a bridge over an abyss
Ans. Schubiger, Die Sangersehule St. Odlens vom Sten bis 12ten Jahrh. (Einsiedlen, 1858). Daniel II. 3-31 gives thirty-five pieces under the title Notker et Notkeriana. Neale (p. 32) gives a translation of one sequence-: Sancti Spi ritus adsit nobis gratia.
1 For further information on Sequences see especially Neale' s Epistola fritica de Sequentiis at the beginning of the fifth vol. of Daniel's Thes. (p. 3-36), fol lowed by literary, notices of Daniel ; also the works of Bartsch and Kehrein (who gives the largest collection), and Dnffield in Schaft's Eel. Encyl. III. 161. Neale defines a sequentia: l( prolongatio syllabce rov Alleluia."
8 Translated by Neale, p. 32.