Driving away from the toils of the garden centre I look for catharsis and find it in the deconstruction of hymn libretti. Here’s: Oh God Our Help in Ages Past, verse four.A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night,
Before the rising sun.
The urge to embellish meaninglessly; the second simile evokes a shorter period of time than the first. So why bother with the first?
Eternal Father Strong to Save (ie, For Those in Peril on the Sea) contains a bit of the Town and Country Planning Act:
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep.
Amazing! The sea apparently defined its own boundaries. And, alas, the bidding didn’t work. Yet as I sing the hymn my throat contracts with emotion; this is a noble tune, I’ll reserve my banderilla for something else.
My final example requires no deconstruction or, for that matter, any further comment:
A message came to a maiden young;
The angel stood beside her,
In shining robes and with golden tongue,
He told her what would betide her.
By now the car is in my own driveway and catharsis is complete. I have passed into the state that follows: the exact word escapes me but it is characterised by a desire to post.
