Yet, when he forgets the depression of the time, and turns to the consolations of eternity, he shows how firmly he believed his own motto, ‘In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’ He has the sure trust and confidence of all God’s chosen, and at times kindles into holy rapture. The prevailing tone, however, is of sadness—the depression of the saint, not the perplexity of the doubter. In 1839 Keble published, also anonymously, his metrical version of the Psalms. He had intended it to be a substitute for Tate and Brady, and had hoped to secure episcopal sanction for its use in the dioceses of Oxford and Winchester. It is, however, more interesting from the standpoint of the expositor than the hymnologist, very few of its versions being adapted to congregational use. The _Lyra Innocentium_, published anonymously in 1846, is vastly inferior to his great work, and has little to recommend it to those who are not in sympathy with the High Church Movement. After Heber and Keble all that there was of justice in Montgomery’s sarcastic complaint, that hymns had been written by ‘all sorts of persons except poets’[174] is gone. They were poets first, hymn-writers afterwards. Keble’s greatest hymn is taken from his ‘Verses for Evening,’ which begins as a poem, and rises from meditation to praise and prayer. The earlier verses are not suitable for a hymn-book, but the beauty of the later lines is only fully realized when they are remembered. ’Tis gone, that bright and orbèd blaze, Fast fading from our wistful gaze; Yon mantling cloud has hid from sight The last faint pulse of quivering light. In darkness and in weariness The traveller on his way must press, No gleam to watch on tree or tower, Whiling away the lonesome hour. Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, It is not night if Thou be near: O may no earth-born cloud arise To hide Thee from Thy servant’s eyes. There is surely no more beautiful illustration of the way in which the Christian rises from Nature up to Nature’s God. As in the case of so many hymns, the part is greater than the whole. The six verses universally selected are not improved by the addition of others—though they have much to commend them.