Analysis of The King James Version

for Lindsay Hall

Of all the bondage of those vast
Dark centuries of dumb despair,
Of long benighted shadows cast,
It speaks, in phrases clear and fair,

Felicitous and heaven-sent,
In antique tongue, of olden things.
This handmaid of enlightenment
still sounds in all of us, and sings

What's past, or passing, or to come.
It hymns in majesty the speech
Of an abiding God, to sum
His rede. The creed once meant to reach

A blackened age forever gone
Now gives our world its shining song.