The foe behind, the deep before

Author: John Mason Neale

Neale, John Mason, D.D., was born in Conduit Street, London, on Jan. 24, 1818. He inherited intellectual power on both sides: his father, the Rev. Cornelius Neale, having been Senior Wrangler, Second Chancellor's Medallist, and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and his mother being the daughter of John Mason Good, a man of considerable learning. Both father and mother are said to have been "very pronounced Evangelicals." The father died in 1823, and the boy's early training was entirely under the direction of his mother, his deep attachment for whom is shown by the fact that, not long before his death, he wrote of her as "a mother to whom I owe more than I can express." He was educated at Sherborne Grammar School, and was afterwards… Go to person page >

The foe behind, the deep before. J. M. Neale. [Easter Carol.] This carol for Easter was published in his Carols for Eastertide, 1854, p. 55, in 12 stanzas. It is found in several modern hymn-books, but usually in an abbreviated form. It reads like an Ode from a Greek Canon, and is sometimes taken for one. As Dr. Neale translated the Canon for Easter by St. John of Damascus, "Tis the day of resurrection" in 1853, and this Carol for Easter was published in 1854, it is not improbable that the direct source of inspiration was the Greek of St. John, although many of Neale's carols for Eastertide are “free imitations" of Latin Sequences.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)