To end off the year, Thomas Tallis’ arrangement of the plainchant hymn that ends the office of Compline every night.
Te lucis ante terminum,
Rerum creator, poscimus
Ut solita clementia
Sis praesul ad custodiam.
Procul recedant somnia
Et noctium phantasmata;
Hostemque nostrum comprime,
Ne polluantur corpora.
Praesta, Pater omnipotens,
Per Jesum Christum Dominum,
Qui tecum in perpetuum
Regnat cum Sancto Spiritu.
Amen.
The hymn is one of the strongest reminders of my summer’s travels. Some recordings seem to pull the rug out from under my feet, plunging me back into that back-row pew in St John Cantius in Chicago, where I was nearly a whole church away from the chanting canons, but somehow still impossibly close in our sharing the Divine Office. Or into the Benedictine monks’ oratory, knowing for once that here, Compline at 7.30 really meant the close of day, and feeling deeply the profound synchronisation of natural time and civil time, so long now distorted by the ubiquitous use of artificial light.
the lexical form 