[mosesdapoet]

Long Meter
Quatrains — four lines.
(a b a b rhyme scheme,not sure about this.)
Iambic - da DAH
quatrameter — da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH —
I THINK that I shall NE-ver See ...
on JOR-dan’s BANK the BAP-tist’s CRY...
Example:

O SAluTARis HOStiA

Been meaning to respond on this. This is one of the 3 latin hymns I mentioned which appear in that missalette. The cumbersome American translation from latin to this traditional latin hymn usually sung during the exposition of the Host while in the monstrance and sometimes during communion loses that LM quality of cadence.

In fact what they should do is leave it alone and if they feel they need to offer a translation. Offer it as a not as a lyric but as an foot note explanation of meaning.
.

[Mad Dawg]

The common translation is a product of the movement toward Catholicism, or at least “Anglo-Catholicism,” of 19th century England. Neale was probably the most prolific of translators. Caswell, who gave us “O Saving Victim” was ordained an Anglican and then swam the Tiber in 1847.

I'll defend the English translators this far: They didn't slather their translation with treacle. They seem to have made an effort to stick with the spare elegance of the Latin text.

Contrast, on the one hand, Aquinas through Caswell with, on the other the Memorare in Latin and the usual English version. There are unnecessary and,IMHO, sentimental interpolations which are really impositions on the original.

Virgo virginis, Mater becomes “Virgin of virgins, [my] mother.” Why? This saddles the mystic proclamation of Mary's maternity with bathetic subjective appropriation of her majesty.

“Noli, Mater Verbi, verba mea despicere” is elegant. It is almost a witty pleading, bold and abject at once. To fluff it up with “Mother of the Word [Incarnate]” is like coating a diamond with a marshmallow! Why the needless specification? Are they afraid we might think she is the mother of some other word?

Sure, I am biased toward the Oxford Movement divines, not least because they introduced aesthetic, theological, and even spiritual hunger into the gilded cardboard of Episcopal worship. But I think, while Aquinas's Latin will always outshine any translation, Caswell and Neale did a good job and managed an act of almost subversion in introducing Aquinas, forsooth, into stolid Anglicanism.

So, yeah, I basically agree with you. I am adding that these translations may end up doing more good than we would expect. Even sentimental, frilly, and florid devotion to the Panagia is better than no devotion.