"No Tramp of Soldiers' Marching Feet"

One of the hymns sung in church on Palm Sunday was "No Tramp of Soldiers' Marching Feet," and while I was singing it, I noticed something about one of the phrases.  The text is sung to the tune "Kingsfold," and the end of the second phrase of that melody descends:

In the third verse, the text sung to this melody is "The palms, how soon laid down!"  The descending melody there is a musical representation of that laying down.  Furthermore, "soon" is sung to that second pair of eighth notes, and that melismatic pronunciation (two syllables instead of just one), with the second note lower than the first, expedites the descent.