This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MEDIÆVAL HYMNS.
219

    There is another, but inferior hymn, with the same commencement. The reference, it need hardly be said, is to Canticles iii. 11.

    This very, perhaps too, bold metaphor is very seldom employed elsewhere in mediæval poetry. In the Compline Hymn for Whit-Sunday in the Sarum Breviary, among other titles of our Lord, we find

    Agnus, Ovis, Vitulus, Serpens, Aries, Leo, Vermis.