"Across the Sky the Shades of Night"

In March, I started working through Georg Phillip Telemann's Fast allgemeines Evangelisch-Musicalisches Lieder-Buch, a collection of some four hundred hymn tunes (more details here).  A few months ago, I learned his arrangement of "Allein Gott in der Höh'."  Although the text that was originally paired with this tune is "All Glory Be to God on High" (LSB #947), I found myself thinking about "Across the Sky the Shades of Night" (LSB #899), which is sung to the same tune, and I noticed a small feature.

Here's the first phrase:

The first line is, of course, "Across the sky the shades of night."  The phrase "across the sky" is sung to a group of notes that spans a fifth (G to D), and this musical distance provides a sense of the breadth of that "across."  That each note is a different pitch furthers this sense.

"Across the Sky the Shades of Night"

One of the hymns in the New Years' Eve church service this week was "Across the Sky the Shades of Night" (located in the "New Year" section of The Lutheran Service Book).  I noticed a couple things about it.  Most of them are in the fourth phrase (the tune is "Allein Gott in der Höh"):

In the second verse, the text here is "And all our sins confessing."  "Sins" is sung with a melisma (C B), musically giving a sense of that "all."  In the fourth verse, the text is "Past death and all despairing."  Here, the "all" itself is sung with that same melisma for the same effect.  In the fifth verse, the text is "Your mercy walk beside us."  "Walk" is sung with still the same melisma, musically giving a sense of movement (and there's an added sense of stepping since C and B are adjacent notes).

I also noticed one thing in the sixth phrase:

In the first verse, the text here is "We raise to You our earnest cry."  The melody ascends at the beginning, musically giving a sense of that "rais[ing]" (although it's used metaphorically).

Looking at just the text, I also noticed some alliteration in the third verse:  "For You have been our strength and stay."  The repeated st provides a sense of steadfastness.