Part 10 (1/2)

6. The just when they behold thy fall with feare will praise the Lord: And in reproach of thee withall cry out with one accord.

When the unhappy King Charles fled from Oxford to a camp of troops he also was insulted by having the same psalm given out in his presence by the boorish chaplain of the troops. After the cruel words were ended the heartsick king rose and asked the soldiers to sing the fifty-sixth psalm.

Whenever I read the beautiful and pathetic words, as peculiarly appropriate as if they had been written for that occasion only, I can see it all before me,--the great camp, the angry minister, the wretched but truly royal king; and I can hear the simple and n.o.ble song as it pours from the lips of hundreds of rude soldiers:

1. Have mercy Lord on mee I pray for man would mee devour.

He fighteth with me day by day and troubleth me each hour.

2. Mine enemies daily enterprise to swallow mee outright To fight against me many rise O thou most high of might

5. What things I either did or spake they wrest them at thier wil: And all the councel that they take is how to work me il.

6. They all consent themselves to hide close watch for me to lay: They spie my pathes, and snares have layd to take my life away.

7. Shall they thus scape on mischief set, thou G.o.d on them wilt frowne: For in his wrath he will not let to throw whole kingdomes downe.

It would perhaps be neither just nor conducive to proper judgment to gather only a florilege of n.o.ble verses from Sternhold and Hopkins' Version and point out none of the ”weedy-trophies,” the quaint and even uncouth lines which disfigure the work. We must, however, in considering and judging them, remember that many words and even phrases which at present seem rather ludicrous or undignified had, in the sixteenth century, significations which have now become obsolete, and which were then neither vulgar nor unpoetical. I also have been forced to take my selections from a copy of Sternhold and Hopkins printed in 1599, and bound up with a ”Breeches Bible;” for I have access to no earlier edition. Sternhold and Hopkins themselves may not be in truth responsible for many of the crudities. Hopkins, in his rendition of the 12th verse of the seventy-fourth Psalm, thus addresses the Deity:--

”Why doost withdraw thy hand abacke and hide it in thy lappe?

O pluck it out and bee not slacke to give thy foes a rap.”

”Rap” may have meant a heavier, a mightier blow then than it does now-a-days.

Here is another curious verse from the seventieth psalm,--

”Confounde them that apply and seeke to make my shame And at my harme doe laugh & crye So So there goeth the game.”

The sixth verse of the fifty-eighth psalm is rendered thus:--

”O G.o.d breake thou thier teeth at once within thier mouthes throughout; The tuskes that in thier great jawbones like Lions whelpes hang out.”

Another verse reads thus:--

”The earth did quake, the raine pourde down Heard men great claps of thunder And Mount Sinai shooke in such state As it would cleeve in sunder.”

One verse of the thirty-fifth psalm reads thus:--

”The belly-G.o.ds and flattering traine that all good things deride At me doe grin with greate disdaine and pluck thier mouths aside.

Lord when wilt thou amend this geare why dost thou stay & pause?

O rid my soul, my onely deare, out of these Lions clawes.”

The word tush occurs frequently and quaintly: ”Tush I an sure to fail;”

”Tush G.o.d forgetteth this.”

”And with a blast doth puff against such as would him correct Tush Tush saith he I have no dread.”