Defective hymns

[necturus]

I've been noticing a lot of flaws in hymns lately. Some are minor annoyances, like trying to rhyme "prove" with "love". But today we were practicing an Easter anthem containing the line:

"Easter triumph, Easter joy; this alone can sin destroy."

If there is such a thing as sin, surely it can destroy a lot of other things too.

Comments

[serene]

(Putting on my bible-teacher and music-major hats:)

1) Prove and Love are what we in poetry call "half-rhymes" and they're intentional and not flaws.

2) It means "this alone can destroy sin", and of course, they mean that Jesus's resurrection was the only thing that could destroy sin.

[redbird]

Adding to what Serene said, not so much defective as archaic; twenty-first century speakers of American English don't swap word order that way, but it used to be common to make rhyme or meter work.

[necturus]

The word order doesn't bother me; the ambiguity does. Sloppiness of this sort is somewhat forgivable in a newspaper headline; newspapers have deadlines, after all, and are read once and thrown away. But in something meant to be sung for generations, it is rather disappointing.