Thy wales are made of precious stones, Thy bulwarkes diamondes square, Thy gates are of right orient pearle, Exceeding riche and rare. Thy terrettes and thy pinnacles With carbuncles doe shine, Thy verie streetes are paued with gould, Surpassinge cleare and fine. Thy houses are of ivorie, Thy windoes cristale cleare, Thy tyles are mad of beaten gould, O God that I were there. There David standes with harpe in hand, As maister of the queere, Tenne thousand times that man were blest That might this musicke hear. Our Ladie singes magnificat With tune surpassinge sweete, And all the virgins beare their parts Sitinge aboue her feete. Te Deum doth Sant Ambrose singe, Sant Augustine dothe the like; Ould Simeon and Zacharie Haue not their songes to seeke. There Magdalene hath left her mone, And cheerefullie doth singe, With blessed Saints whose harmonie In everie streete doth ringe. Hierusalem, my happie home, Would God I were in thee, Would God my woes were at an end, Thy ioyes that I might see. Finis. Finis.[68] III Early Modern Hymns II.—Seventeenth Century When the seventeenth century opened there were, as we have seen, hardly any English hymns except such as may be taken from metrical versions of the Psalms. With the new century a new era begins; and though we are not yet in what George Macdonald calls ‘the zone of hymn-writing,’ we are soon able to gather the materials of a hymn-book of the modern type. It would be quite possible to compile a very good hymnal from writers who preceded Dr. Watts, if a wise editorial discretion were exercised in the omission of unsuitable verses and the revision of phrases offensive to modern taste. Amongst the hymn-writers of the seventeenth century one name is pre-eminent—Thomas Ken (1637-1711), Bishop of Bath and Wells. His fame rests upon his three great hymns—Morning, Evening, and Midnight—for little else in his voluminous poetical works is suited to the worship of the sanctuary. In all the Christian choir there is no worthier name than that of Thomas Ken, whom neither fear nor flattery could move from the strait path of duty. He lived in the spirit of his own lines— Let all thy converse be sincere, Thy conscience as the noonday clear; Think how all-seeing God thy ways, And all thy secret thoughts surveys. He spent his earlier years of ministry in quiet places, amongst those who honoured and loved him, but later had some curious experiences as Lord Dartmouth’s chaplain at Tangier, where he testified with his accustomed resolution against evil-doers and evil-speakers, coming, as Samuel Pepys records, into collision with the afterwards infamous Colonel Kirke, because he preached against ‘the excessive liberty of swearing which we observe here.’