Keble's Hymn and Yeats's The Words Upon the Window-Pane

Keble's Hymn and Yeats's The Words Upon the Window-Pane SAMUEL J. ROGAL • YEATS'S THE WORDS UPON THE WINDOW-PANE (written and initially performed in 1930; published in 1934) contains two verses of four lines each from the Anglican hymn, "Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear." At the first reading of the play, the two verses may appear to have been inserted by Yeats for no other reason than to create - as Mrs. Henderson announces just prior to the seance - "the right conditions."! Indeed, in this announcement she states that the hymn is "the same we had the last time" (p. 946). However, an examination of the "full text (the one Yeats probably knew) of "Sun of my soul" reveals the two verses to be useful in the context in which the playwright cites them. "Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear" is a cento version of a poem by John Keb1e (1792-1866) - Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Vicar of Hursley, and an early force in the Oxford Movement - entitled" 'Tis gone, that bright and orbed blaze.,,2 Keble dated the poem (of fourteen four-line stanzas) 25 November 1820; yet he did not publish it until seven years later as part of his collection, The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays throughout the Year (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1827). The cento version, "Sun of my soul," appeared first in Henry Venn Elliott's Psalms and Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Worship (London, 1835); the full text of the hymn reads as follows: 1. 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. 2. When the soft dews of kindly sleep My weary eyelids gently steep, Be my last thought, how sweet to rest For ever on my Saviour's breast. 87 88 SAMUEL J. ROGAL 3. Abide with me from morn till eve, For without Thee I cannot live; Abide with me when night is nigh, For without thee I dare not die. 4. If some poor wandering child of Thine Have spurned to-day the voice divine, Now, Lord, the gracious work begin; Let him no more lie down in sin. S. Watch by the sick; enrich the poor With blessings from Thy boundless store; Be every mourner's sleep to-night, Like infant's slumbers, pure and light. 6. Come near and bless us when we wake, Ere through the world our way we take, Till in the ocean of Thy love We lose ourselves in heaven above. Yeats's source for the hymn is contained in the directions at the end of Mrs. Henderson's words of welcome: "[They sing the following lines from Hymn 564, Irish Hymnal.]" (p. 946). By Irish Hymnal he means The Church Hymnal, Biographical Indexes by G. A. Crawford and J. A. Eberle (Dublin: Association for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1864, 1873, 1891).3 Hymn 564 is Elliott's cento version of Keble's poem, from which Yeats inserted the second and fourth stanzas (from the text cited above) into his play. In his Psalms and Hymns, Elliott catalogued Keble's poem as an evening hymn, as did the editors of The Church Hymnal. Clearly, for anyone who takes his hymn-singing seriously, the hymn is intended to bring on comfort and to produce an incentive to spiritual thoughts. For Yeats, however, the opening stanza of "Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear" becomes the convenient vehicle for transcending Mrs. Henderson into her control - "a dear little girl called Lulu who died when she was five or six years old" (p. 946). With the singing of the lines "0 may no earth-born cloud arise/ To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes" Mrs. Henderson is asleep, snoring; the seance begins. Yeats places the next passage (stanza four) from the hymn at the point in the seance where "Lulu" feels her power waning in the face of the sinner Swift: "Power almost gone. Another verse of hymn. Hymn will bring good influence" (p. 951). The "good influence" is required to turn...