Several hands have attempted versions of Adoro te; it would be impertinent to add another attempt without a word of prefatory justification. My object has been to supply what doubtless others also have desiderated, such an English rendering of these twenty-eight lines as will sing naturally to the plain chant melody in the Vatican edition.

St. Thomas’s hymns to some appear doggerels. And certainly they are severely stript of all adventitious ornament or poeticism. But there is one merit that cannot be denied to them by the most envious critic : an immense significance. They are so crowded with meaning that each may be called a little Summa of Eucharistic theology, with a variation from the festal didactics of Lauda Sion—appropriate to an Office—to the devout personal effusion of Adoro te. Eucharistic theology reduced within the strict dimensions of verse, and, more particularly, of ‘singing-verse.’ The verse form serves both for economy of bulk in expression and for a mnemonic device. The virtue of good doggerels is that they are not easily forgotten, and I cannot believe that St. Thomas was not deliberately making a mnemonic compendium of the simplest statement of Catholic doctrine about Transubstantiation. Perhaps he was at the same time executing a lyrical impulse to give to this truth the most chastened and disciplined form of verbal beauty. Lyrics or doggerels, it beats me to decide which they are.

Anyhow, the peculiar quality of this hymn makes a peculiar problem for the translator—and all translators of Latin hymns travel a road that is milestoned with the skeletons of predecessors who have failed horribly—for two reasons.