Hymnody and Poetry

My fellowship has a strange custom when singing some old hymns--skipping verses--usually the third. That is strange to me when one considers that the verse is poetry. When reading "Crossing the Bar", would you skip the third verse????? I have never really found out why that happens in our worship; does anyone know?

Another thing we do in our fellowship is change verses we do not like or understand. Many years ago, it was references to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the verse was "too emotional", sometimes the verse contained "archaic or words that would be unknown to most people." Again, these were written by poets who said what they wanted to say in praise to God!!!

A recent example I have run across is "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". In the last part of the first verse I grew up singing "Teach me ever to adore thee..." instead of "Teach me some melodious sonnet..." One is definitely more poetic than the other. Does that mean that the revisers did not think worshipers would know what a sonnet was????It is a mystery to me. I do so enjoy this beautiful old hymn in its original form. And by the way, the second verse mentions "my Ebenezer" (go figure).

In the preface to his A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, John Wesley wrote: "In these hymns there is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put in to patch up the rhymes, no feeble expletives. Here is nothing turgid or bombast, on the one hand, or low and creeping on the other. Here are no cant expressions: no words without meaning...We (he and his brother Charles) talk common sense, both in prose and verse, and use no word in a fixed and determinative sense. Here are, allow me to say, both the purity, the strength, and the elegance of the English language: and, at the same time, the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every capacity."

Of course, as soon as the words become public domain, anyone is free to change these old hymns.
I wish they did not seem so compelled to do that. Thomas Dudley-Smith ( a lyricist) writes, "In its own way, a hymn needs to be a work of art. A good hymn should exist in its own right as a product of craftsmanship and the artist's ear and eye."

Contemporary hymn writers are carrying on the old traditions of the Wesleys and others. I love singing both the old and the new.