Unless stated otherwise, my source for hymn texts and tunes is The Lutheran Service Book.

Friday, March 30, 2018

"Jesus, Grant That Balm and Healing"

One of the hymns in the Maundy Thursday service yester-day was "Jesus, Grant That Balm and Healing," and I noticed something about the rhyme scheme.  Each verse has the rhyme scheme ABABCCDD, except for the end of the second verse, where the lines of the last couplet don't perfectly rhyme.  The verse ends:
Or should Satan press me hard,
Let me then be on my guard,
Saying, "Christ for me was wounded,"
That the tempter flee confounded.
While wounded and confounded look like they should rhyme, they don't, and this is significant with regard to the text.  The imperfect rhyme between wounded and confounded illustrates the tempter's confusion or (as in the archaic sense of confound) his ruin.