Amazing irritation about verse 5.

[upinaballoon]

Hymns Old and New has Amazing Grace at no. 27.
The notes say vs. 1---4 John Newton (1725-1807) alt.,
vs. 5 John Rees (1828-1900)

Verse 5 irritates me. It says

When we've been there a thousand years,
bright shining as the sun,
we've no less days to sing God's praise
than when we first begun.

Can anyone understand why I want to alter verse 5 and write the last two lines as

we've no few'r days to sing God's praise
than when we'd first begun.

If John Newton's words can be altered I so wish someone would alter John Rees's too. Am I the only person irritated by it?

The fewer / less distinction is one of those stuffy rules that some of us grew up observing, but I'm not sure it's worth making that big deal about. This article covers some of the history blog.oup.com/2008/02/usage/ - relevant quote:

Even those who favor restricting less to mass nouns recognize that it can be appropriate for certain kinds of countable things, such as units of time or money.

"days" here is a synonym for time which is continuous, and we can talk about 4 and an half days etc, so even days can be a non-countable measure. I am sensitive to the less / fewer usage but this particular instance doesn't sound wrong to me.

'Fewer' is two syllables and stops the verse scanning correctly , whereas 'less' is one syllable and it scans perfectly.

I suspect that's why it was used and I'm okay with that , but not normally !

Using 'begun' rhymes with sun , grammatically wrong , it's just poetic license .

You're right about the "begun" - I notice in OP's version, they've changed it to we'd first begun which is grammatical: "we had first begun".

While we're pedanting, @upinaballoon , the first line should say ten thousand years.

I think it was you @DadDadDad a good few moons ago now who linked to an excellent article on why the supermarkets who were berated for being wrong on the "5 items or less" thing weren't actually wrong at all. I'm sure it was either you or Prism (who I hope is still around somewhere)

Hi, @So1invictus - I'm sure I did read such an article a few years back so it could have been me! I couldn't find what I thought I remembered when I googled a few days ago. I'll have another look.

I know 'less' scans. That's why I'd like to alter it to 'few'r' rather than 'fewer'. There would be one syllable with 'few'r'.

As for 'begun', if I changed it to 'we had begun' and shortened that to 'we'd begun' I'd have it grammatically correct and still rhyming.

Don't you find that different hymn books have different versions of hymns? That's one of the reasons why I put the name of the book I was quoting from which I was quoting. Jesus knew I 'borrowed' the hymn book last week so I have taken it back, but next time I have chance to look at one I'll check that particular first line.

Yes your amendments for the last two lines are grammatically better.

Some versions have 'here' instead of 'there' - I think 'here' makes sense, if it means generations of humans have been here on Earth.

It makes less sense to me if the word 'there' is used.

Now 'bright shining' is bothering me.....

If all lyrics had to follow the rules of perfect grammar, I wonder how many songs / hymns / poems would survive.

@CherrySocks - but the preceding verse talks about "grace will lead me home", which I take to mean being ushered at last into one's heavenly home at the end of one's earthly life, so then talking about being "there" forever makes sense to me.

Well, I’m irritated now I’ve read it! Was in blissful ignorance before. Thanks, op