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PSALM LXV.
Sion it is where thou art praiséd,
Sion, O God, where vows they pay thee:
There all men's prayers to thee raiséd,
Return possessed of what they pray thee.
There thou my sins, prevailing to my shame,
Dost turn to smoke of sacrificing flame.
Oh! he of bliss is not deceivéd, disappointed.
Whom chosen thou unto thee takest;
And whom into thy court receivéd,
Thou of thy checkrole[65] number makest:
The dainty viands of thy sacred store
Shall feed him so he shall not hunger more.
From thence it is thy threat'ning thunder--
Lest we by wrong should be disgracéd--
Doth strike our foes with fear and wonder,
O thou on whom their hopes are placéd,
Whom either earth doth stedfastly sustain,
Or cradle rocks the restless wavy plain.
Thy virtue stays the mighty mountains,
Girded with power, with strength abounding. |
power. |
| The roaring dam of watery fountains |
_the "dam of fountains" |
Thy beck doth make surcease her sounding.
When stormy uproars toss the people's brain, |
[is the ocean._ |
| That civil sea to calm thou bring'st again. |
_political, as opposed
[to natural._ |
Where earth doth end with endless ending,
All such as dwell, thy signs affright them;
And in thy praise their voices spending,
Both houses of the sun delight them---
Both whence he comes, when early he awakes,
And where he goes, when evening rest he takes.
Thy eye from heaven this land beholdeth,
Such fruitful dews down on it raining,
That storehouse-like her lap enfoldeth
Assuréd hope of ploughman's gaining:
Thy flowing streams her drought doth temper so,
That buried seed through yielding grave doth grow.
Drunk is each ridge of thy cup drinking;
Each clod relenteth at thy dressing; groweth soft.
Thy cloud-borne waters inly sinking,
Fair spring sprouts forth, blest with thy blessing.
The fertile year is with thy bounty crowned;
And where thou go'st, thy goings fat the ground.
Plenty bedews the desert places;
A hedge of mirth the hills encloseth;
The fields with flocks have hid their faces;
A robe of corn the valleys clotheth.
Deserts, and hills, and fields, and valleys all,
Rejoice, shout, sing, and on thy name do call.
The first stanza seems to me very fine, especially the verse, "Return
possessed of what they pray thee." The third stanza might have been
written after the Spanish Philip's Armada, but both King David and Sir
Philip Sidney were dead before God brake that archer's bow.[66] The
fourth line of the next stanza is a noteworthy instance of the sense
gathering to itself the sound, and is in lovely contrast with the closing
line of the same stanza.
One of the most remarkable specimens I know of the play with words of
which I have already spoken as common even in the serious writings of
this century, is to be found in the next line: "Where earth doth end with
endless ending." David, regarding the world as a flat disc, speaks of the
ends of the earth: Sidney, knowing it to be a globe, uses the word of
the Psalmist, but re-moulds and changes the form of it, with a power
fantastic, almost capricious in its wilfulness, yet causing it to express
the fact with a marvel of precision. We see that the earth ends; we
cannot reach the end we see; therefore the "earth doth end with endless
ending." It is a case of that contradiction in the form of the words
used, which brings out a truth in another plane as it were;--a paradox in
words, not in meaning, for the words can bear no meaning but the one
which reveals its own reality.
The following little psalm, The Lord reigneth, is a thunderous
organ-blast of praise. The repetition of words in the beginning of the
second stanza produces a remarkably fine effect.
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