The Day Is Done

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Day is Done":

The day is done, and the darkness

      Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

      From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

      Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

      That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

      That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

      As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,

      Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

      And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

      Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

      Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,

      Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

      And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

      Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

      Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,

      And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

      Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

      The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

      That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

      The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

      The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

      And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

      And as silently steal away.

Non Clamor Sed Amor

Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. 3, Appendix VII, p. 446:

The Motto

Upon one of Mr. Longfellow's book-plates was engraved the motto "Non clamor sed amor." It was taken from the following stanza which he had found, without any author's name, in one of his books: --

"Non vox sed votum,
Non chorda sed cor,
Non clamor sed amor,
Clangit in aure Dei."

Not voice but vow,
Not harp-string but heart-string,
Not loudness but love,
Sounds in the ear of God.

The verse that is Longfellow's motto has been oft-repeated through the ages, and variously attributed to Augustine, the Venerable Bede, Lewis Bayly, Francis Roberts, and others. I have spent some time tracing its origin, and after reviewing the various citations by Bayly, Roberts, and, further back, Jerome Zanchius, and his mentor, Peter Martyr, I think I am able with some confidence to point to the source of this verse as being a medieval gloss on Gratian's Decretum, Distinction 92, Chaps. 1 and 2.

Lewis Bayly, The Practice of Piety (1611), p. 154:

4. As you sing uncover your heads (1 Cor. xi. 4), and behave yourselves in comely reverence as in the sight of God, singing to God in God’s own words; but be sure that the matter make more melody in your hearts (Eph. v. 19; Col. iii. 16) than the music in your ear; for the singing with grace in our hearts is that which the Lord is delighted withal, according to that old verse:

Non vox, sed votum; non miisica chordula, sed cor:

Non clamans, sed amana, psallit in aure Dei.

‘Tis not the voice, but vow;

Sound heart, not sounding string;

True zeal, not outward show,

That in God’s ear doth ring.

Francis Roberts, Clavis Bibliorum: The Key of the Bible (1665), p. 129:

4. Sing with the heart and inward affections, making melody with Grace there to the Lord, as well as with the voice making melody to the outward eare. The Apostle insists in a special manner upon this Direction.
....
d. The Gloss rightly prefers the real heart-melody before the formal Voice-musick: saying;

Non vox, sed votum; non Musica chordula, sed Cor:
Non clamor, sed Amor; Psallit in aure Dei.

Soule's vow, not ayery voice; sound heart, not sounding string:
Pure love, not piercing-noise; in Gods ear sweetly sing.

Jerome Zanchius, Commentarius in Epistolam Sancti Pauli ad Ephesios (1594, 1888 ed.), p. 242:

Multa in hanc sententiam & contra hanc nimis numerosam Musicam scripta legantur in Decret. distinct. 92. Et concluditur ex hoc loco Pauli. corde magis lingua & voce canendum esse Dominio. Et ibidem glossa duos pios versus, quanquam non elegantes.

Non vox sed votum: non chordula Musica sed cor,
Non clamans sed amans cantat in aure Dei.

Peter Martyr, "On Music and Song" ("De Musica et Carminibus") in Commentary on Judges (In Librum Iudicum) (1561), translated by Joseph C. McLelland, in John Patrick Donnelly, S.J., Frank A. James III & Joseph C. McLelland, eds., The Peter Martyr Reader (1999), p. 170:

Augustine adds that those who give greater heed to music than to the words of God sin with penalty, as he puts it. Jerome agrees wholly with this judgment, as he has noted on the letter to the Ephesians.15 Gregory of Rome shared the same opinion, in a synod at Rome. Their words are written in the Decrees, distinction 92, the chapter Cantantes and the chapter In sancta Romana.16 In its gloss we read these two verses, not very eloquent, but devout:

Not the voice, but the desire; not the tune, but the heart;
not being noisy but loving, sounds in God's ear.17

15 Augustine Conf. X.50 (PL 32.800): poenaliter me peccare confiteor; Jerome on Eph. 5.19 has "Let the servant of God sing in such a way that the words of the text rather the voice of the singer cause delight" -- Gratian Dec. I, dist. XCII (PL 187.129ff.).
16 Gratian Dec. I, dist. 92, chaps. 1 and 2 (PL 187.429): corde magis quam voce Deo cantandum meminerint.
17 Non vox, sed votum; non cordula musica, sed cor [vox]; Non clamans, sed amans cantat in aure dei. I follow Anthony Marten's Commonplaces here, substituting cor for vox at the end of the first line, thus offering a better parallel to cordula and contrast to the initial vox.

Sands of Time

The hour-glass was not only used in Puritan pulpits to measure sermon-time, but also placed on tombstones to remind passers-by of the brevity of life. It is a common motif in classic poetry which in the age of digital clocks may perhaps seem obsolete or irrelevant to modern man, but even so, the sands of time, representing our days as they are measured out by the hand of God, are finite, and the consideration of them is meant to stir us to apply our hearts to wisdom (Ps. 90.12). So if you see an hour-glass in an antique shop or read the following lines, take a moment to consider. It is time well-spent.

When children learned the alphabet from The New England Primer they would read:

G As runs the Glass,
Our Life doth pass.

The hour-glass motif appears in George Herbert's The Temple more than once, including these lines from Church Monuments which are reminiscent of Isa. 40.6:

That flesh is but the glasse, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust.

and visually it is evident in Easter-Wings.

The first stanza of a hymn inspired by the words and letters of Samuel Rutherford by Annie Ross Cousin, Last Words, or, The Sands of Time Are Sinking:

The sands of time are sinking,
The dawn of Heaven breaks,
The summer morn I've sighed for,
The fair sweet morn awakes:
Dark, dark hath been the midnight,
But dayspring is at hand,
And glory -- glory dwelleth,
In Immanuel's land.

An extract from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime.
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

A meditation by John Bunyan who spiritualized temporal things in A Book for Boys and Girls, later renamed, Divine Emblems, in The Works of John Bunyan, Vol. 3, p. 760:

Upon an Hour-Glass

This glass, when made, was, by the workman's skill,
The sum of sixty minutes to fulfil.
Time, more nor less, by it will out be spun,
But just an hour, and then the glass is run.
Man's life we will compare unto this glass,
The number of his months he cannot pass;
But when he has accomplished his day,
He, like a vapour, vanisheth away.

Ainsworth Psalter

Henry Ainsworth, English Congregationalist, wrote the psalter that was used on the Mayflower and at Plymouth, Massachusetts by the Pilgrims. Later, the first book published in America would be another psalter, the Bay Psalm Book, but when the Pilgrims first sang psalms in the New World, the lines came from the Ainsworth Psalter, titled The Book of Psalmes: Englished both in Prose and Metre with Annotations.

An extract from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish:

So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand;
Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean,
Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind;
Saw the new-built house and people at work in a meadow;
Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice of Priscilla
Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem,
Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the Psalmist,
Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and comforting many.
Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form of the maiden
Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift
Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle,
While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion.
Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,
Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together,
Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard,
Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses.
Such was the book from whose pages she sang the old Puritan anthem,
She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest,
Making the humble house and the modest apparel of home-spun
Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth of her being!

Psalm 100 in fact (along with Psalm 23) can be heard sung today on a cd from Plimoth Plantation. The words are as follows:

Shout to Jehovah, all the earth,
Serve ye Jehovah with gladness;
before him come with singing mirth
Know that Jehovah he God is.
It's he that made us, and not we;
his folk, and sheep of his feeding.
O with confession enter ye his gates,
his courtyards with praising:
Confess to him, bless ye his name.
Because Jehovah he good is:
his mercy ever is the same
and his faith, unto all ages.