Chapter8: Hubert At Lewes Priory.William de Warrenne and Gundrada his wife, the daughter of the mighty Conqueror, were travelling on the Continent and made a pilgrimage to the famous Abbey of Clairvaux, presided over by the great abbot, poet, and preacher of the age, Saint Bernard. So much did they admire all they saw and heard, so sweet was the contrast of monastic peace to their life of ceaseless turmoil, that they determined to found such a house of God on their newly-acquired domains in Sussex, after the fashion of Clairvaux.Already they had superseded the wooden Saxon church of Saint Pancras, the boy martyr of ancient Rome, which they found at Lewes, by a stone building, and now upon its site they began to erect a mightier edifice by far, upon proportions which would entail the labour of generations.A wondrous and beautiful priory arose; it covered forty acres, its church was as big as a cathedral, a magnificent cruciform pile—one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty-five feet in height from pavement to roof; there were twenty-four massive pillars in the nave {14}, each thirty feet in circumference; but it was not until the time of their grandson, the third earl, that it was dedicated. Nor indeed were its comely proportions enhanced by the two western towers until the very date of our tale, nearly two centuries later. Then it lived on in its beauty, a joy to successive generations, until the vandals of Thomas Cromwell, trained to devastation, so completely destroyed it in a few brief weeks that the next generation had almost forgotten its site {15}.The first monks were foreigners, by the advice of Lanfranc, and, as a great favour, Saint Bernard sent three of his own brethren from Clairvaux, who taught the good people of Lewes to sing “Jesu dulcis memoria.” Loth though we are to confess it, there can be little doubt that the foreigners were a great advance in learning and piety upon the monks before the Conquest; the first prior, Lanzo, was conspicuous for his many virtues and sweet ascetic disposition.There the bones of the founders were laid to rest beneath the gorgeous fabric they had founded, and there they had hoped to await the day of doom and righteous retribution. But alas! poor Normans! in the sixteenth century old Harry pulled the grand church down above their heads; in the nineteenth the navvies, making the railroad, disinterred their bones. But they respected the dead, the names William and Gundrada were upon the coffins which their profane mattocks unearthed, and the reader may see them at Southover Church.In the freshness of a May morning Hubert and his new uncle, Sir Nicholas Harengod, dismounted at the gate of the priory, having left their train at the hostelry up in the town.“Canst thou tell us whether the brother of Saint John, Roger erst of Walderne, is tarrying within?”“Certes he is, but just now he heareth the Chapter Mass—few services or offices doth he miss, and like Saint James of old, his knees are worn as hard as the knees of camels.”“We would fain see him—here is his son.”“By our lady, not to mention Saint Pancras, a well-favoured stripling. And thou?”“I am Sir Nicholas of Walderne,” said he of that query, with some importance, which was quite lost upon the janitor.“Walderne! Some place in the woods may be. Well, get you, worshipful sirs, to the hospitium, where we feed all hungry folk at the hour of noon, and I will strive to find the good brother.”The splendid group of buildings, of which only a few half-demolished walls remain, rose before them, on each side of the great quadrangle which they now entered; the chapter house, where the brethren met for counsel; the refectory, where they fed; the dormitory, where they slept; the scriptory, where they copied those beautiful manuscripts which antiquarians love to obtain; the infirmary, where the sick were tended; and lastly, the hospitium or guest house, where all travellers and pilgrims were welcome.They entered the hospitium, where the noontide meal was about to be served. It was plain but ample; solid joints, huge loaves, ale, and even wine in moderation. Some twenty sat down to the hospitable board.During the “noon meat” a homily was read. When the meal was over a lay brother came and beckoned Sir Nicholas and Hubert to follow him. He led them to the cloisters and knocked at the door of a cell.“Come in,” said a deep voice.Could this be the father Hubert had so longed to know, clad in a long dark dress, with haggard and worn features, which, however, still preserved their native nobility?At the sight of his visitors he showed an emotion he vainly endeavoured to repress, under an affectation of self control. He greeted Sir Nicholas kindly, but embraced his fair son, while tears he could not repress streamed down his worn cheeks.“This is then my Hubert. Ah, how like thy short-lived mother! She lives again in thee, my boy.”“But, my father, I trust thy courage and valour have descended to me also. They do not call me girlish at Kenilworth.”“Such as I have to bequeath is, I trust, thine. Thy mother came of a race more addicted to lute and harp than sword or spear. It was the worse for them in their dire need, when the stern father of him who shelters thee harried their land with fire and sword.“But we waste time. Sit down and let the eyes of the father, weary of the world, gaze upon the boy in whom he lives again.”For a few moments there was silence, during which Roger seemed struggling to overcome an emotion which overpowered him.“I was thinking of the sunny land of Provence, and was there again with one dearly loved, who was only spared to me a few short months. She died in giving thee birth, my Hubert; had she lived, I had not become the wreck I am.“So thou desirest to go forth into the world, my son?”“As thou didst also, my father.”“But I trust under other auspices. Tell me not of my giddy youth. Dearly did I pay the price of youthful folly and unseemly strife. Thou, too, my boy, must buy experience; God grant more cheaply than I bought mine.”There he shuddered.“My boy, hast thou ever wished to be a warrior of the Cross—a crusader?”“Often, oh how often. In that way I would fain serve God.”The monk soldier smiled.“And how wouldst thou attempt to convert the infidel?”“At the first blasphemy he uttered I would cut him down, cleave him to the chine.”“Such our knights generally hold to be the better way, for their arms were readier than their tongues, but I never heard that they saved the souls of the heathen thereby.”“No one wants to see them in heaven, I should think. Let them go to their own place.”“It is wrong, I know it is. It must be. There is a better way—come with me, boy, I would fain show thee something.”He led the wondering boy into the garden of the monastery. There in the centre arose an artificial mount, and upon it stood a cross—the figure of the Redeemer, bending, as in death, from the rood. It was called “The Calvary,” and men came there to pray.The father bent his knee—the son did the same.“Now, my boy, whom did He die for but His enemies? Even for His murderers He cried, ‘Father, forgive them!’ And you would fain slay them.”Hubert was silent.“When thou art struck—”“No one ever struck me without getting it back, at least no boy of my own age,” interrupted Hubert.“And He said, ‘When thou art smitten on one cheek, turn the other to the smiter.’”“But, my father, must we all be like that? I am sure I couldn’t be that sort of Christian; even the good earl Simon is not, nor Martin either. Perhaps the chaplain is—do you think so?”“Who is Martin?”“The best boy I know, but I have seen him fight.”“Well, and thou may’st fight nay, must, as the world goes, in a good cause, and there is a sword which thou must bear unsullied through the conflict. But if thou avengest thine own private wrongs, as I did, or bearest rancour against thy personal foes, never wilt thou deliver me.”“Deliver thee?”“Yes, my child. I am under a curse, because on the very day of the great sacrifice on the Cross, on a Friday, I slew a man who had insulted me. He died unhouselled, unanointed, unannealed, and his ghost ever haunts my midnight hour.”“Even here, in this holy, consecrated place?”“Even in the very church itself.”“Can any one else see it?”“They have never done so. Perhaps as thou art of my blood, it might be permitted thee.”“I will try. Let me stay this night with thee, and watch by thy side in the church.”“Thou shalt be blessed in the deed. I will ask Sir Nicholas to tarry the night if he can do so.”“Or I might ride back alone tomorrow.”“The forest is dangerous; the outlaws abound.”“That for the outlaws,hujus facio;” and Hubert snapped his fingers. It was about the only scrap of Latin he cared for.The father smiled sadly.“Come, we are keeping Sir Nicholas waiting;” and they returned to the great quadrangle, where they found that worthy striding up and down with some impatience.“We must be off at once, brother, Hubert and I. The woods are not over safe after nightfall.”“I must ask thee to spare me my son a while. I would fain make his further acquaintance.”“Come back with us to Walderne, then. The lad would soon die of the gloom of a monastery.”“I spent four years in one, and the earl found me alive at the end,” said Hubert.“Nay, my brother, I may not leave the priory now.”“But how long wilt thou keep the boy?”“Only till tomorrow.”“Well, I may tarry till tomorrow, but not at the monastery. My old crony, the De Warrenne up at the castle, will lodge me, and I will return for the lad after the Chapter Mass, at nine.”Of all forms of architecture the Norman appears to the writer the most awe inspiring. Its massive round pillars, its bold, but simple arch, have an effect upon the mind more imposing and solemnising, if we may coin the word, than the more florid architecture of the decorated period, which may aptly be described as “Gothic run to seed.” Such a stern and simple structure was the earlier priory church of Lewes, in the days of which we write.A little before midnight two forms entered the south transept by a little wicket door. There was a black darkness over the heavens that night, and a high wind moaned and shrieked about the upper turrets of the stately fane. Oh, how solemn was the inner aspect at that dread hour, lighted only by the seven lamps, which, typical of the Seven Spirits of God, burned in the choir, pendent from the roof.One timorous glance Hubert gave into the dark recesses of the aisles and transept, into the dim space overhead, as if he almost expected to hear the flapping of ghostly pinions in the portentous gloom. A sense of mystery daunted his spirit as he followed his sire by the light of a feeble lamp, carried in the hand, amidst the tall columns which rose like tree trunks around, each shaft appearing to rise farther than the sight could penetrate, ere it gave birth to the arch from its summit. Dead crusaders lay around in stone, and strove with grim visage to draw the sword and smite the worshippers of Mohammed, as if in the very act they had been petrified by a new Gorgon’s head. The steps of the intruders seemed sacrilegious, breaking the solemn stillness of the night as the father led the son into the chapel of the patron saint of his order:Who propped the Virgin in her faint,The loved Apostle John.There the horror-stricken Hubert heard the dismal tale which we have already related, and that his unhappy father believed himself yet visited each night by the ghost of the man he had slain. And also that it was fixed in his poor diseased brain that the apparition would not rest until the crusade, vowed by the Sieur de Fievrault, but cut short by his fall, should be made by proxy, and that the proxy must be onesans peur et sans reproche. And that this reparation made, the poor spirit, according to the belief of the age, released from purgatorial fires, might enter Paradise and reappear no more between the hours of midnight and cock crowing to trouble the living.“What an absurd story,” the sceptic may say. No doubt it is to us, but a man must live in his own age, and there was nought absurd or improbable to young Hubert in it all.And when the weird tale was finished, and the hour of midnight tolled boom! boom! boom! from the tower above, every stroke sent a thrill through the heart of the youth. That dread hour, when, as men thought, the powers of darkness had the world to themselves, when a thousand ghosts shrieked on the hollow wind, when midnight hags swept through the tainted air, and goblins gibbered in sepulchres.Just then Hubert caught his father’s glance, and it made each separate hair erect itself:Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.“Father,” cried the boy, “what art thou gazing at? what aileth thee? I see nought amiss.”Words came from the father’s lips, not in reply to his son, but as if to some object unseen by all besides.“Yes, unhappy ghost, I may dare thy livid terrors now. My son, thy proxy, is by my side, pure and shameless, brave and trustworthy. He shall carry thy sword to the holy soil and dye it ‘deep in Paynim blood.’ Then thou and I may rest in peace.”“Father, I see nought.”“Not there, between those pillars?”“What is it?”“A dead man, with a sword wound in his open breast, which he displays. His eyes live, yea, and the wound lives.”“No, father, there is nothing.”“Then go and stand between those pillars, and prove it to me to be void.”Hubert hesitated. He would sooner have fought a hundred boyish battles with fist, quarterstaff, or even deadly weapons—but this—“Ah, thou darest not. Nay, I blame thee not, yet thou didst say there was nothing.”Hubert could not resist that pleading tone in which the sire seemed to ask release from his own delusion. He went with determined step, and stood on the indicated spot.“He is gone. He fled before thee. The omen is good. Thou shalt deliver thy sire—let us pray together.”Sire and son knelt until the first note of the matin song just before daybreak (it was the month of May) broke the utterance of the father and, we fear we must own it, the sleep of the son.Domine labia mea aperiesEt os meum annuntiabit laudem Tuam.The sombre-robed monks were in the choir, the organ rolling out its deep notes in accompaniment to the plain song of theVenite exultemus, which then, as now, preceded the psalms for the day. Then came the hymn:Lo night and clouds and darkness wrapThe world in dark array;The morning dawns, the sun breaks in,Hence, hence, ye shades—away {16}!“Come, Hubert, dear son, worthy of thy sainted mother. We will praise Him, too, for He has lifted the darkness from my heart.”
William de Warrenne and Gundrada his wife, the daughter of the mighty Conqueror, were travelling on the Continent and made a pilgrimage to the famous Abbey of Clairvaux, presided over by the great abbot, poet, and preacher of the age, Saint Bernard. So much did they admire all they saw and heard, so sweet was the contrast of monastic peace to their life of ceaseless turmoil, that they determined to found such a house of God on their newly-acquired domains in Sussex, after the fashion of Clairvaux.
Already they had superseded the wooden Saxon church of Saint Pancras, the boy martyr of ancient Rome, which they found at Lewes, by a stone building, and now upon its site they began to erect a mightier edifice by far, upon proportions which would entail the labour of generations.
A wondrous and beautiful priory arose; it covered forty acres, its church was as big as a cathedral, a magnificent cruciform pile—one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty-five feet in height from pavement to roof; there were twenty-four massive pillars in the nave {14}, each thirty feet in circumference; but it was not until the time of their grandson, the third earl, that it was dedicated. Nor indeed were its comely proportions enhanced by the two western towers until the very date of our tale, nearly two centuries later. Then it lived on in its beauty, a joy to successive generations, until the vandals of Thomas Cromwell, trained to devastation, so completely destroyed it in a few brief weeks that the next generation had almost forgotten its site {15}.
The first monks were foreigners, by the advice of Lanfranc, and, as a great favour, Saint Bernard sent three of his own brethren from Clairvaux, who taught the good people of Lewes to sing “Jesu dulcis memoria.” Loth though we are to confess it, there can be little doubt that the foreigners were a great advance in learning and piety upon the monks before the Conquest; the first prior, Lanzo, was conspicuous for his many virtues and sweet ascetic disposition.
There the bones of the founders were laid to rest beneath the gorgeous fabric they had founded, and there they had hoped to await the day of doom and righteous retribution. But alas! poor Normans! in the sixteenth century old Harry pulled the grand church down above their heads; in the nineteenth the navvies, making the railroad, disinterred their bones. But they respected the dead, the names William and Gundrada were upon the coffins which their profane mattocks unearthed, and the reader may see them at Southover Church.
In the freshness of a May morning Hubert and his new uncle, Sir Nicholas Harengod, dismounted at the gate of the priory, having left their train at the hostelry up in the town.
“Canst thou tell us whether the brother of Saint John, Roger erst of Walderne, is tarrying within?”
“Certes he is, but just now he heareth the Chapter Mass—few services or offices doth he miss, and like Saint James of old, his knees are worn as hard as the knees of camels.”
“We would fain see him—here is his son.”
“By our lady, not to mention Saint Pancras, a well-favoured stripling. And thou?”
“I am Sir Nicholas of Walderne,” said he of that query, with some importance, which was quite lost upon the janitor.
“Walderne! Some place in the woods may be. Well, get you, worshipful sirs, to the hospitium, where we feed all hungry folk at the hour of noon, and I will strive to find the good brother.”
The splendid group of buildings, of which only a few half-demolished walls remain, rose before them, on each side of the great quadrangle which they now entered; the chapter house, where the brethren met for counsel; the refectory, where they fed; the dormitory, where they slept; the scriptory, where they copied those beautiful manuscripts which antiquarians love to obtain; the infirmary, where the sick were tended; and lastly, the hospitium or guest house, where all travellers and pilgrims were welcome.
They entered the hospitium, where the noontide meal was about to be served. It was plain but ample; solid joints, huge loaves, ale, and even wine in moderation. Some twenty sat down to the hospitable board.
During the “noon meat” a homily was read. When the meal was over a lay brother came and beckoned Sir Nicholas and Hubert to follow him. He led them to the cloisters and knocked at the door of a cell.
“Come in,” said a deep voice.
Could this be the father Hubert had so longed to know, clad in a long dark dress, with haggard and worn features, which, however, still preserved their native nobility?
At the sight of his visitors he showed an emotion he vainly endeavoured to repress, under an affectation of self control. He greeted Sir Nicholas kindly, but embraced his fair son, while tears he could not repress streamed down his worn cheeks.
“This is then my Hubert. Ah, how like thy short-lived mother! She lives again in thee, my boy.”
“But, my father, I trust thy courage and valour have descended to me also. They do not call me girlish at Kenilworth.”
“Such as I have to bequeath is, I trust, thine. Thy mother came of a race more addicted to lute and harp than sword or spear. It was the worse for them in their dire need, when the stern father of him who shelters thee harried their land with fire and sword.
“But we waste time. Sit down and let the eyes of the father, weary of the world, gaze upon the boy in whom he lives again.”
For a few moments there was silence, during which Roger seemed struggling to overcome an emotion which overpowered him.
“I was thinking of the sunny land of Provence, and was there again with one dearly loved, who was only spared to me a few short months. She died in giving thee birth, my Hubert; had she lived, I had not become the wreck I am.
“So thou desirest to go forth into the world, my son?”
“As thou didst also, my father.”
“But I trust under other auspices. Tell me not of my giddy youth. Dearly did I pay the price of youthful folly and unseemly strife. Thou, too, my boy, must buy experience; God grant more cheaply than I bought mine.”
There he shuddered.
“My boy, hast thou ever wished to be a warrior of the Cross—a crusader?”
“Often, oh how often. In that way I would fain serve God.”
The monk soldier smiled.
“And how wouldst thou attempt to convert the infidel?”
“At the first blasphemy he uttered I would cut him down, cleave him to the chine.”
“Such our knights generally hold to be the better way, for their arms were readier than their tongues, but I never heard that they saved the souls of the heathen thereby.”
“No one wants to see them in heaven, I should think. Let them go to their own place.”
“It is wrong, I know it is. It must be. There is a better way—come with me, boy, I would fain show thee something.”
He led the wondering boy into the garden of the monastery. There in the centre arose an artificial mount, and upon it stood a cross—the figure of the Redeemer, bending, as in death, from the rood. It was called “The Calvary,” and men came there to pray.
The father bent his knee—the son did the same.
“Now, my boy, whom did He die for but His enemies? Even for His murderers He cried, ‘Father, forgive them!’ And you would fain slay them.”
Hubert was silent.
“When thou art struck—”
“No one ever struck me without getting it back, at least no boy of my own age,” interrupted Hubert.
“And He said, ‘When thou art smitten on one cheek, turn the other to the smiter.’”
“But, my father, must we all be like that? I am sure I couldn’t be that sort of Christian; even the good earl Simon is not, nor Martin either. Perhaps the chaplain is—do you think so?”
“Who is Martin?”
“The best boy I know, but I have seen him fight.”
“Well, and thou may’st fight nay, must, as the world goes, in a good cause, and there is a sword which thou must bear unsullied through the conflict. But if thou avengest thine own private wrongs, as I did, or bearest rancour against thy personal foes, never wilt thou deliver me.”
“Deliver thee?”
“Yes, my child. I am under a curse, because on the very day of the great sacrifice on the Cross, on a Friday, I slew a man who had insulted me. He died unhouselled, unanointed, unannealed, and his ghost ever haunts my midnight hour.”
“Even here, in this holy, consecrated place?”
“Even in the very church itself.”
“Can any one else see it?”
“They have never done so. Perhaps as thou art of my blood, it might be permitted thee.”
“I will try. Let me stay this night with thee, and watch by thy side in the church.”
“Thou shalt be blessed in the deed. I will ask Sir Nicholas to tarry the night if he can do so.”
“Or I might ride back alone tomorrow.”
“The forest is dangerous; the outlaws abound.”
“That for the outlaws,hujus facio;” and Hubert snapped his fingers. It was about the only scrap of Latin he cared for.
The father smiled sadly.
“Come, we are keeping Sir Nicholas waiting;” and they returned to the great quadrangle, where they found that worthy striding up and down with some impatience.
“We must be off at once, brother, Hubert and I. The woods are not over safe after nightfall.”
“I must ask thee to spare me my son a while. I would fain make his further acquaintance.”
“Come back with us to Walderne, then. The lad would soon die of the gloom of a monastery.”
“I spent four years in one, and the earl found me alive at the end,” said Hubert.
“Nay, my brother, I may not leave the priory now.”
“But how long wilt thou keep the boy?”
“Only till tomorrow.”
“Well, I may tarry till tomorrow, but not at the monastery. My old crony, the De Warrenne up at the castle, will lodge me, and I will return for the lad after the Chapter Mass, at nine.”
Of all forms of architecture the Norman appears to the writer the most awe inspiring. Its massive round pillars, its bold, but simple arch, have an effect upon the mind more imposing and solemnising, if we may coin the word, than the more florid architecture of the decorated period, which may aptly be described as “Gothic run to seed.” Such a stern and simple structure was the earlier priory church of Lewes, in the days of which we write.
A little before midnight two forms entered the south transept by a little wicket door. There was a black darkness over the heavens that night, and a high wind moaned and shrieked about the upper turrets of the stately fane. Oh, how solemn was the inner aspect at that dread hour, lighted only by the seven lamps, which, typical of the Seven Spirits of God, burned in the choir, pendent from the roof.
One timorous glance Hubert gave into the dark recesses of the aisles and transept, into the dim space overhead, as if he almost expected to hear the flapping of ghostly pinions in the portentous gloom. A sense of mystery daunted his spirit as he followed his sire by the light of a feeble lamp, carried in the hand, amidst the tall columns which rose like tree trunks around, each shaft appearing to rise farther than the sight could penetrate, ere it gave birth to the arch from its summit. Dead crusaders lay around in stone, and strove with grim visage to draw the sword and smite the worshippers of Mohammed, as if in the very act they had been petrified by a new Gorgon’s head. The steps of the intruders seemed sacrilegious, breaking the solemn stillness of the night as the father led the son into the chapel of the patron saint of his order:
Who propped the Virgin in her faint,The loved Apostle John.
There the horror-stricken Hubert heard the dismal tale which we have already related, and that his unhappy father believed himself yet visited each night by the ghost of the man he had slain. And also that it was fixed in his poor diseased brain that the apparition would not rest until the crusade, vowed by the Sieur de Fievrault, but cut short by his fall, should be made by proxy, and that the proxy must be onesans peur et sans reproche. And that this reparation made, the poor spirit, according to the belief of the age, released from purgatorial fires, might enter Paradise and reappear no more between the hours of midnight and cock crowing to trouble the living.
“What an absurd story,” the sceptic may say. No doubt it is to us, but a man must live in his own age, and there was nought absurd or improbable to young Hubert in it all.
And when the weird tale was finished, and the hour of midnight tolled boom! boom! boom! from the tower above, every stroke sent a thrill through the heart of the youth. That dread hour, when, as men thought, the powers of darkness had the world to themselves, when a thousand ghosts shrieked on the hollow wind, when midnight hags swept through the tainted air, and goblins gibbered in sepulchres.
Just then Hubert caught his father’s glance, and it made each separate hair erect itself:
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
“Father,” cried the boy, “what art thou gazing at? what aileth thee? I see nought amiss.”
Words came from the father’s lips, not in reply to his son, but as if to some object unseen by all besides.
“Yes, unhappy ghost, I may dare thy livid terrors now. My son, thy proxy, is by my side, pure and shameless, brave and trustworthy. He shall carry thy sword to the holy soil and dye it ‘deep in Paynim blood.’ Then thou and I may rest in peace.”
“Father, I see nought.”
“Not there, between those pillars?”
“What is it?”
“A dead man, with a sword wound in his open breast, which he displays. His eyes live, yea, and the wound lives.”
“No, father, there is nothing.”
“Then go and stand between those pillars, and prove it to me to be void.”
Hubert hesitated. He would sooner have fought a hundred boyish battles with fist, quarterstaff, or even deadly weapons—but this—
“Ah, thou darest not. Nay, I blame thee not, yet thou didst say there was nothing.”
Hubert could not resist that pleading tone in which the sire seemed to ask release from his own delusion. He went with determined step, and stood on the indicated spot.
“He is gone. He fled before thee. The omen is good. Thou shalt deliver thy sire—let us pray together.”
Sire and son knelt until the first note of the matin song just before daybreak (it was the month of May) broke the utterance of the father and, we fear we must own it, the sleep of the son.
Domine labia mea aperiesEt os meum annuntiabit laudem Tuam.
The sombre-robed monks were in the choir, the organ rolling out its deep notes in accompaniment to the plain song of theVenite exultemus, which then, as now, preceded the psalms for the day. Then came the hymn:
Lo night and clouds and darkness wrapThe world in dark array;The morning dawns, the sun breaks in,Hence, hence, ye shades—away {16}!
“Come, Hubert, dear son, worthy of thy sainted mother. We will praise Him, too, for He has lifted the darkness from my heart.”