"Comfort, Comfort Ye My People"

I wrote about a small feature in "Comfort, Comfort Ye My People" last year, but I found an-other note I neglected to include, and last Advent, I discovered something new to write about.

The third verse ends with the lines "Let the valleys rise to meet Him / And the hills bow down to greet Him," sung to these phrases from the tune "Freu dich sehr":

The second phrase generally descends, illustrating the hills' "bow[ing] down."

The other thing I noticed is a feature in the text:  "far and near" in the lines "Hark, the herald's voice is crying / In the desert far and near" at the beginning of the third verse is a merism.