3. Other Measures

3. Other Measures

Less popular, more literary measures, though some of them were used early in the hymnaries, seem to have been interpreted as _rhythmi_ more slowly. This, indeed, is what one would expect; but the evidence is not decisive. The Sapphic stanza, the beautiful meter of the second poem of Boethius,[44] even iambic trimeter, were in time transformed. But in hymns they were comparatively infrequent; and for other uses they were revived with what seems clearly quantitative intention and achievement. Either rendering is beautiful for one of the few Sapphic poems that are essentially hymns, a hymn for Sunday Lauds.

Ecce iam noctis tenuatur umbra; Lucis aurora rutilans coruscat; Nisibus totis rogitemus omnes Cunctipotentem,

Ut Deus nostri miseratus omnem Pellat languorem, tribuat salutem, Donet et patris pietate nobis Regna polorum.

Præstet hoc nobis deitas beata Patris et nati pariterque sancti Spiritus, cuius reboatur omni Gloria mundo.

AH 51: 31.[45]

The most striking verse in the Bangor manuscript is that of the familiar Communion hymn.

Sancti, venite, Christi corpus sumite Sanctum bibentes, quo redempti, sanguinem,

Salvati Christi corpore et sanguine, A quo refecti laudes dicamus Deo,

Hoc sacramento corporis et sanguinis Omnes exuti ab inferni faucibus.

Dator salutis, Christus filius Dei, Mundum salvavit per crucem et sanguinem;

Pro universis immolatus Dominus Ipse sacerdos exsistit et hostia....

Folio 10 _verso_; AH 51: 298.

The spondaic opening and the marked cæsura may be reminiscent of the _Quamvis fluente dives auri gurgite_ of Boethius;[46] and the composition is far superior to the Bangor habit in sense of time values. Not only Irish and popular, but probably much older than this manuscript,[47] the hymn may have been composed as a _metrum_. By either rendering it is unusually, and at the same time expertly, free. Though the spread of stress rhythm carried some verse that is rude and mechanical, as in this manuscript, it did not of itself forfeit time values, and it opened in the old language new effects of verse.