may their seed-time past be yielding year by year a richer store
I woke up this morning with, for no adequately defined reason, a hymn on my brain. Not any hymn, but specifically "Lord Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing", the hymn of choice for the last day of term at all of my junior schools and at least one of my senior schools. (As far as I remember the government school I attended for my first two years of high school didn't do hymns in assembly, but my subsequent private school sure as hell did, I used to play the piano for them. Badly. Because I never practised enough).
"Lord Dismiss Us" is, of course, not only fairly ridiculously thundering and catchy, it's also the hymn most likely to be lustily belted out by the assembled scholars, with the fine, careless rapture and considerable verve that only the approaching holidays can bring. (The term-starting version, "Lord Behold Us", is always a comparatively pale, limp and spiritless thing). I seem to remember my junior school headmaster, Mr. Horsefall, particularly liking "Lord Dismiss Us", which would figure as he was also the teacher who took our music sessions, and he pounded out songs on the piano with maximum volume and élan and absolutely no delicacy of touch at all, with the net result that I distinctly remember him breaking a piano string by thumping, twang in the middle of the chorus of "The Hippopotamus Song". (Although, to be fair, if ever a song was an invitation to thump, "The Hippopotamus Song", with its wonderful waltz-time chorus, is it). And, of course, hymns in general are bloody good fun both to sing and to play; their characteristic chord progressions, arrangements and cadences are enormously satisfying on some fairly profound and slightly simplistic level. Singing old-fashioned hymns is absolutely the only thing I ever enjoy about being in a church.
But have you ever looked at the words for "Lord Dismiss Us"? It seems to have been written by a staunch Victorian, Henry James Buckoll, in 1843. Henry James Buckoll was apparently an assistant master at Rugby, and clearly an embittered ironist, driven to ruthlessly pillory the horrors of life with children. "Pardon all, their faults confessing, time that's lost may all retrieve?" The dear little kiddies have clearly spent the whole term driving him up the wall, in frivolous pursuit of faults rather than learning. "May thy children ne'er again thy Spirit grieve"? "May all taint of evil perish"? They've been really bad. God is sad at them. And "help us selfish lures to flee"? The writer holds out very little hope for the holidays, which will clearly be given over to hedonistic vice. When he asks "sanctify our every pleasure; pure and blameless may it be" I don't think he's optimistic. The whole tone of the thing makes one see "all who here shall meet no more" in rather sinister terms, don't you think? Oh God, he's asking, let some of them be eaten by bears over the holidays.
I love the Victorians. So gloomy.
It occurs to me that the presence of this joyous little ditty in my cerebellum this particular morning is because the dear little gazelles have all just come back from the 10-day vac, which means today is the rude shock after a blissful week of empty campus. Clearly I'm wishing they'd all go away again, particularly since a major course drop deadline was on the Friday before the vac, and I can guarantee that I'll have a stream of them through my door being stunned and wounded because I can't bend the rules for them. At any rate, I shall pursue the rest of the day with the hymn resounding around my skull, and with any luck I've ear-wormed you lot properly as well. It's a small consolation.
"Lord Dismiss Us" is, of course, not only fairly ridiculously thundering and catchy, it's also the hymn most likely to be lustily belted out by the assembled scholars, with the fine, careless rapture and considerable verve that only the approaching holidays can bring. (The term-starting version, "Lord Behold Us", is always a comparatively pale, limp and spiritless thing). I seem to remember my junior school headmaster, Mr. Horsefall, particularly liking "Lord Dismiss Us", which would figure as he was also the teacher who took our music sessions, and he pounded out songs on the piano with maximum volume and élan and absolutely no delicacy of touch at all, with the net result that I distinctly remember him breaking a piano string by thumping, twang in the middle of the chorus of "The Hippopotamus Song". (Although, to be fair, if ever a song was an invitation to thump, "The Hippopotamus Song", with its wonderful waltz-time chorus, is it). And, of course, hymns in general are bloody good fun both to sing and to play; their characteristic chord progressions, arrangements and cadences are enormously satisfying on some fairly profound and slightly simplistic level. Singing old-fashioned hymns is absolutely the only thing I ever enjoy about being in a church.
But have you ever looked at the words for "Lord Dismiss Us"? It seems to have been written by a staunch Victorian, Henry James Buckoll, in 1843. Henry James Buckoll was apparently an assistant master at Rugby, and clearly an embittered ironist, driven to ruthlessly pillory the horrors of life with children. "Pardon all, their faults confessing, time that's lost may all retrieve?" The dear little kiddies have clearly spent the whole term driving him up the wall, in frivolous pursuit of faults rather than learning. "May thy children ne'er again thy Spirit grieve"? "May all taint of evil perish"? They've been really bad. God is sad at them. And "help us selfish lures to flee"? The writer holds out very little hope for the holidays, which will clearly be given over to hedonistic vice. When he asks "sanctify our every pleasure; pure and blameless may it be" I don't think he's optimistic. The whole tone of the thing makes one see "all who here shall meet no more" in rather sinister terms, don't you think? Oh God, he's asking, let some of them be eaten by bears over the holidays.
I love the Victorians. So gloomy.
It occurs to me that the presence of this joyous little ditty in my cerebellum this particular morning is because the dear little gazelles have all just come back from the 10-day vac, which means today is the rude shock after a blissful week of empty campus. Clearly I'm wishing they'd all go away again, particularly since a major course drop deadline was on the Friday before the vac, and I can guarantee that I'll have a stream of them through my door being stunned and wounded because I can't bend the rules for them. At any rate, I shall pursue the rest of the day with the hymn resounding around my skull, and with any luck I've ear-wormed you lot properly as well. It's a small consolation.