Chapter X

CHAPTER X.

PSALMS IN ENGLISH METRE.

"As through Thy temple now the deep strains peal,

And choral minstrelsy is heard to swell, .

Devotion wakes within us, and we feel

All that the Psalmist hath expressed so well."

How few among the legion of modern versifiers have ever caught either the spirit or the manner of the sacred old hymns, which they have tried to throw into English metre. With few exceptions, those who have aimed at a literal version of the Psalms in metre are tame, and have lost the soul of the original; while many of the paraphrasers are lacking in dignity, and excite any feeling but that of devotion, by calling their neighbours to sing their psalms "done into metre." Sternhold and Hopkins must be venerated as we revere antiquity even in its dotage. Brady and Tate are always associated with our early impressions of old Church psalmody, when the parish-clerk used to act as head singer, and give the key-note on a doleful instrument that they called a pitch-pipe. As to the music of the Scotch version, it is enough that it is admired most by those who abominate the organ, while they are agreeably moved by the notes of a Highland piper. It would be better to let the old English Psalter alone. Many a weary poet would have been spared his pains, and many psalm-singers would have escaped bewilderment amidst wildernesses of dreary verse, had due and wide attention been given to a few verses from one whose happily expressed opinion is of some value. An author who inherited poetic taste from a gifted father, who shared poetic power with two brothers still more gifted, who had passed twenty years of classical discipline in Westminster School, and who lived to catch the spirit of Hebrew melodies, and enjoy communion with holy psalmists among the inspiring beauties of Devonian valleys and hills, has a right to have his opinion respected on the question of metrical psalmody. Who that has sought out the loveliest retreats of our native island can ever forget the valley of the Exe, as it winds down from the borders of Exmoor to the old-storied town of Tiverton, overlooking from its southern slopes the ancient fords of the Exe and the Leman, lapped amidst orchards and gardens, and its streets and houses refreshed and beautified by the clear bright stream which flows down through it from the upper springs? Two pilgrims of nature once found their way to this old Two-ford-town. One of them lives to remember that, having lingered about the remains of the castle, and having mused and talked over the fortunes of the pensive daughter of Edward IV., who spent the days of her widowhood in its delicious retirement, and having talked about those who for many ages had lived, and sung, and fought, and died in and around the sturdy fortress, they found their way, by an avenue of venerable trees, into the famous grammar-school, founded in 1599, by the will of Peter Blundell; and there, after sundry speculations over the ponderous antique oaken desks and benches, with their multitudinous records of penknife work, they found themselves standing in silence before a remarkable portrait. It represented one of the former masters of the school, nor could its distinctive family features be mistaken. "Look at that," said the one to the other, "does not the face seem instinct with life? It looks as if it knew what we have been saying, in our way down the valley, about the various efforts of people to produce a metrical version of the Psalms. Surely those lips are moving, as if they would re-utter what they expressed so long ago."

"What was that?"

"What? Why, just listen, and hear with what quiet ease keen polished satire may be made to pass into warm and beautiful hymnic devotion "—

Has David Christ to come foreshow'd?

Can Christians then aspire
To mend the harmony that flow'd

From his prophetic lyre?

How curious are their wits, and vain,

Their erring zeal how bold,
Who durst with meaner dross profane

TTia purity of gold!

His Psalms unchanged the saints employ,

Unchanged our God applies;
They suit th' apostles in their joy,

The Saviour when He dies.

Let David's pure unaltered lays

Transmit through ages down
To Thee, O David's Lord, our praise!

To Thee, 0 David's Son!

Till judgment calls the seraph throng

To join the human choir,
And God, who gave the ancient song,

The new one shall inspire.

So thought and so sang Samuel Wesley; thereby somewhat condemning, not only Watts, against whom chiefly these lines had been directed, but his brother Charles also—yea, his own father, and even himself; for each of them had tried his powers in translating or paraphrasing Hebrew psalms into English rhyme. Nor had Samuel Wesley, the father, failed in every case. His version of Psalm cxiv. may be sung with unbroken pleasure—

When ransom'd Israel came

From faithless Egypt's hands,
The house of Jacoh's name
From foreign hostile lands,

Judah alone
God's holy place,
And Israel's grace

Was His bright throne.
Amazed old ocean saw,

And toils chambers fled;
While Jordan's streams withdraw
To seek their distant head.
Tall mountains bound
Like jocund rams,
The hills like lambs
Skipp'd lightly round.

What ail'd thee, 0 thou sea,

To leave thine ancient bed?
Why did old Jordan flee,
And seek its distant head?

Ye mountains, why
Leap'd ye like rams,
While hills like lambs
Skipp'd lightly by?
All nature's utmost bound
The God of Jacob's own,
Where sea or land is found,
Fall trembling at His throne;

At whose command
Hard rocks distil
A crystal rill

And drench the sand.

The tasteful old rector shows himself alive to the grand simplicity, the condensed power, elegant conciseness, and noble imagery of this seeming fragment of a sublime ode; and he will be thought to have approached nearer to the original than his own son Charles, who has rendered the same psalm more freely, and in more pompous measure. The mind and pen which gave its distinctive character to the "Spectator" would naturally feel the inspiration of a psalm like this; and Addison has remarked that "its author has written so as deeply to impress the mind of his readers by pointing out miraculous effects without mentioning an agent, till at last, when the sea is seen rapidly re.tiring from the shore, Jordan retreating to its source, and the mountains and hills running away like a flock of affrighted sheep, that the passage of the Israelites might be every way uninterrupted; then the cause of all is sud denly introduced, and the presence of God in His grandeur solves every difficulty." Literature was Addison's calling. Like many others who have been tempted into positions unsuited to their character, or to which their powers have not proved equal, Addison found that marriage into high life afforded "no addition to his happiness," and that elevation to official state entailed burdens from which an easy and happy relief is not always possible. Retreat alone gave him the promise of peace at the last. Pensioned and in retirement, he sought for solace in preparing a "defence of the Christian religion," and in planning a new poetical version of the Psalms. Neither plan was completed. And perhaps it is better for his reputation, as a psalmist, that he left mere specimen fragments of his intended version. What he wrote will always live. Nor is there in what he wrote anything, either in spirit or tone, which favours in the least degree the suspicion which some have cast upon his Christian sincerity. His memory will not be damaged by the unworthy insinuations of Pope, neither will lovers of charity think the worse of him because the unsympathizing and unloving Tonson " always thought him a priest in his heart." As an undying minister of instruction and pleasure to English minds and hearts, his memory will not take the tarnish of contemporary slander. All lovers of well-applied genius will love him, were it only for his version of Psalm xix. It has been thought that the pure love for "silently living nature" which gives such a devotional charm to his verses, and which he so sweetly expresses on introducing his psalm to the readers of the "Spectator," must have breathed its first and deepest inspiration into his soul amidst some of the quiet scenes of his boyhood. One of these was the cathedral close at Lichfield. It was evening when for the first time we entered that reverend enclosure. The sun had gone down, and it was our time of preparation for the Sabbath. Where could such an hour be more solemnly kept than amidst the associations which, seen and unseen, gathered beneath the shadows of so venerable a sanctuary? The outer world was growing dim, but everything that was visible oifered an agreeable introduction to the invisible. Among the whisperings which came to the ear of fancy, as we paced up and down that noble avenue on the north side of the church, known as "the Dean's walk," there came many remarkable names, which, as they touched us in succession, called up some deep thinkings about the present life and action of those who once enjoyed the shade of these same trees, and figured familiarly in these same sequestered dwellings. On this scene the last century had witnessed some curious interfacings of character. The sober and the frolicsome, the comic and the tragic, the sacred and the profane, had strangely mingled and manoeuvred here at times. Many a day had seen Addison, as a school-boy, passing to and fro through the deanery garden. There the wit and imagination of Farquhar were stimulated to immortalize the dishonours of his licentious age; there the Bishop's Begistrar, Gilbert Walmsley, saved his own name from oblivion by acting the patron to David Garrick. At the end of the walk, the eye could wander over the parapet of the close, and command the beautiful valley where Samuel Johnson used to wander in early life. The mysteries of nightfall were beginning to shroud it here and there; but Stow Hill was standing in clear outline against the sky, in affectionate watchfulness over its still waters. There, at the foot of the hill, was the old tower of St. Chad's church, where, tradition says, "Ovin heard the angels sing at St. Chad's obit." We lingered long, watching the brightening reflections of the stars in Stow-Pool, and musing on the possibility of angels taking a part in the anthem at a saint's burial, until our ear caught a sweet, thrilling harmony coming up seemingly from the recesses of the cathedral crypt, and floating tremulously along the dark aisles above. Was it the music of angels? It might rather be the voice of choristers tuning themselves for the morrow's psalmody. But it touched one's very soul, and called up the voice of a psalm from within. Just then the rising moon threw up her light from the horizon, and gave the last inspiring touch. The spirit of Addison himself might be there joining us in his own inimitable psalm—

The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

Their great Original proclaim.

The unwearied sun, from day to day,

Does his Creator's power display,

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What, though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What, though no real voice or sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found;
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing as they shine,
"The hand that made us is Divine."

The author of this noble psalm in English metre may have been thrown back in imagination to quiet evenings

under the elms in Lichfield Close, when, amidst the excite-
ments of literary life, he issued his Saturday invitation to
the pleasures of psalmody, and prepared his readers for
them by saying, "Faith and devotion naturally grow in
the mind of every reasonable man who sees'the impressions
of Divine power and wisdom in every object on which he
casts his eye. The Supreme Being has made the best
arguments for His own existence, in the formation of the
heaven and the earth; and these are arguments which a
man of sense cannot forbear attending to, who is out of the
noise and hurry of human affairs." Peace to'the memory
of the man who thus taught his generation to enjoy the
inspired utterance that "the heavens declare the glory of
God, and the firmament showeth His handy-work." Nor
can any one despise the reflections of Divine power and
goodness which come upon us from suns, moons, and stars,
without being in danger of debasing his own soul; at the
same time, to confine ourselves to the lights of the visible
creation, or even to the lessons of a mere general providence,
is to rest in a religion of sentiment rather than of life, and to
be in danger of looking for satisfaction in a partial and
comparatively powerless devotion. No, God must be sought
chiefly in His revealed Word, and should be contemplated
in the work of His Holy Spirit, and in the person and king-
dom of His manifested Son. How the devotion of the
inspired psalmist kindles and glows when he looks at God
in the face of the reigning Messiah! Can anything be
more sublime than Psalm Ixxii? Could there be a more
perfect harmony of the Divine and the human in prayer and
praise? And who does not thank God for the man who
threw that song into English metre, so happily as to give
it all the charms of now music, so effectually as to natural-
ize it to the purest taste and to the warmest hearts of
Christian England f James Montgomery did this when he
taught us to sing-
Hail to the Lord's Anointed,

Great David's greater Son!
Hail, in the time appointed,

Hi a reign on earth begun!
He comes to break oppression,

To let the captive free,
To take away transgression,

And rule in equity.

He comes with succour speedy,

To those who suffer wrong; To help the poor and needy,

And bid the weak be strong; To give them songs for sighing,

Their darkness turn to fight, Whose souls, condemn'd and dying,

Were precious in His sight.

He shall come down like showera

Upon the fruitful earth,
And love, joy, hope, like flowers,

Spring in His path to birth;
Before Him on the mountains,

Shall peace, the herald, go; And righteousness, in fountains,

From hill to valley flow.

Arabia's desert ranger

To Him shall bow the knee; The Ethiopian stranger

His glory come to see; With offerings of devotion

Ships from the isles shall meet, To pour the wealth of ocean

In tribute at His feet.

Kings shall fall down before Him,

And gold and incense bring; All nations shall adore Him,

His praise all people sing; For He shall have dominion

O'er river, sea, and shore; Far as the eagle's pinion

Or dove's light wing can soar.

For Him shall prayer unceasing,

And daily vows ascend,
His kingdom still increasing,

A kingdom without end.
The mountain dews shall nourish

A seed in weakness sown,
Whose fruit shall spread and nourish,

And shake like Lebanon.

O'er every foe victorious,

He on His throne shall rest, From age to age more glorious,

All blessing and all blest:
The tide of time shall never

His covenant remove;
His name shall stand for ever,

That name to us is Love.

But while a versifier here and there has given a psalm, in rhyme without entirely degrading the holy strain of the inspired Psalmist; it may be said again, better, on the whole, to let the grand old English Psalter alone. Chant its measures, sing them, or murmur them in holy undertones, but let nobody try to make them all into a book of rhymes. Were we to judge from what Milton did in this line, even he would fail in the larger attempt; and, after his failure, we might expect as little as we get from Watts and Charles Wesley, and their modern followers in wholesale psalmody. Watts wrote too fast; Wesley was faster still. One of Wesley's zealous advocates amuses and instructs us by saying, "You may take all the poetry of Watts, and Cowper, and Pope, and the hymnic compositions of many others, who have a well-earned name as sacred poets, and they are all outnumbered by the single prolific pen of the poet of Methodism." The standard is quantity then! How much did he write ?" Seven thousand 'psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs'"! Seven thousand from one pen! and that the pen of a zealous, busy, evangelist and pastor! These thousands could not all be gems; nor, indeed, could multitudes of them have any claim even, to the honour of paste jewellery. No man can write so many verses, and so fast, and always write well. Not that the voluminous pages of Wesley and Watts are left without adornment of rich gems set here and there. Amidst many dreary pages, Watts sometimes clothes a psalm in simple and unblemished beauty. Whose gratitude, and trust, and hope, have not kindled into quiet fervour while singing thus?

My Shepherd will supply my need,

Jehovah is His name;
In pastures fresh He makes me feed,

Beside the living stream.

He brings my wandering spirit back,

When I forsake His ways;
And leads me for His mercy's sake,

In paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death,

Thy presence is my stay;
A word of Thy supporting breath

Drives all my fears away.

Thy hand, in spite of all my foes,

Doth still my table spread;
My cup with blessings overflows,

Thine oil anoints my head.

The sure provisions of my God

Attend me all my days;
O may Thy house be my abode,

And all my work be praise!

There would I find a settled rest,

(While others go and come)
No more a stranger or a guest,

But like a child at home.

Charles "Wesley, however, is more equal throughout than Watts, and holds a more gracefully sustained flight. Where the rapt psalmist specially invites us to a celestial elevation, Watts sometimes

Meets

A vast vacuity: all unawares

Fluttering his pennons vain, plump down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep.

Wesley's power in metrical psalmody is seen to the best advantage where most others are least successful. His version of Psalm cxix. is one of his best. What Manton required an awful folio to explain, Wesley sets forth, with charming fulness and transparency, in the light of twentyfour pages. He shows himself at once the expositor, the theologian, the Hebrew chorister, and the poet; nor is it too much to say that, in his version of this remarkable didactic ode, he has presented to us "an enchanting and well-sustained poem, which, without any approach to tautology, exhibits all the pleasing variety, warmth, and freshness of original verse, while it tenaciously adheres to the spirit of the inspired Psalmist." The world had wellnigh lost this pleasant morsel; the manuscript turned up to a friendly eye where it was not looked for. There are mysteries in the world of literature, and especially about the ins and outs of the literary market, which, in a way, answer to some of the curious secrets of nature. There have been precious germs of vegetable life unseen and unknown for years, treasured up far below the surface, until some modern road-makers effect their cutting through the hill-side, and then, at the very next spring season, up start, on the bare slope, many a plant and flower that had hitherto been thought foreign to the neighbourhood; or, as the warm summer sun opens on some sea-side garden of our inland coast, a tiny seed-vessel, borne on the ocean current or on the breeze, or by a winged carrier from across the water, opens its beauty on this strange soil, and excites a wonder how it should have come here. So, now and then, a freakish inroad on the deep accumulations of some venerable library makes way for some hidden treasures to show themselves; or, perhaps, a curious current of interest, or even a questionable side-wind, carries out a manuscript or two from their obscurity, and leaves them open to the daylight on some unpretending bookstall. How the wind blew, or from what point the stream came which dislodged Charles Wesley's manuscript from its college confinement, must still be a mystery. It is clear, however, that, with some of its library honours yet upon it, it was found by a book-hunter as he was scouring the bookmarket, possibly in one of the many indefinable stages of Bibliomania. Had there been nothing more in the volume than Wesley's rendering of Psalm cxix., it would have been worth finding. The seventh and eighth parts, answering to Zain and Cheth in the original, are fair specimens of the poet's embodiment of the Psalmist's spirit, in a kind of harmonized paraphrase and translation :—

Thee, 0 Lord, the good, the just,

True and faithful I receive;
Keep Thy word, in which I trust,

Thou who gav'st me to believe:
Hoping for Thy promised aid,

Comfort in my grief I find;
This my fainting mind hath stay'd,

Still it stays my fainting mind.

Me the proud have greatly scorn'd;

Yet I still unshaken stood,
Never from Thy statutes turn'd,

Never left the narrow road.
On Thine ancient works I thought,

Look'd again the same to see;
Thou of old hast wonders wrought,

Wonders Thou shalt work for me.

Tearless of the scorner's power,
Fearful for their souls I was,

Saw hell open to devour

All who break Thy righteous laws: Lord, Thy laws my songs have been

In my pilgrimage below,
Kept by them from woe and sin,

In a world of sin and woe.

Thee I have remembered, Lord,

Musing in the silent night, Loved Thy name, and kept Thy word,

Pure and permanent delight I did in Thy precepts prove:

Heaven on earth obedience is, Perfect liberty and love,

Perfect power and perfect peace.

Thou my portion art, 0 Lord!

Long resolved through Thee I am To fulfil Thine every word,

Give me but the help I claim: All my heart hath sought Thy face,

Still Thy favour I implore; Grant me now the promised grace,

Bid me go and sin no more.

All my sins I call'd to mind,

Own'd, and left them all for God; Labour'd the right way to find,

Thee with earnest zeal pursued; Tum'd my feet without delay;

Long'd Thine utmost will to prove, Eager all Thy law to obey,

Restless to retrieve Thy love.

Spoil'd and hated for Thy sake,

Thee I never would forego, Would not from Thy law turn back;

Oh my Life, my Heaven below, Thee I all day long will praise,

Thee I will at midnight sing! True and righteous are Thy ways,

Glory to my God and King!

Join'd to all who fear the Lord,

Them my dearest friends I own; Them that'keep Thy holy word,

Saved by grace through faith alone. Earth is full of love divine;

Love divine for all is free; Teach me, then, the law benign;

Guide, and save, and perfect me.

Psalm xc. comes to us in a metrical English version of beautiful simplicity from one who has been called "the Shakespeare of Scotland." It is said of Robert Burns that he never failed in any poetic attempt, except in epigrams. He certainly did not fail in this essay at turning an old eastern ode into charming English verse. The man had indeed a versatile genius. He could sing in Scotch or English, or in a musical mixture of the two. He could be comic or serious, tender or lofty, each and all by turns. He engages our hearts in a "Cotter's" family devotion, laughs and jokes with "auld Nickie-ben," dances and rides with witches, mimics the voice of Bruce with effect, becomes an impersonation of passionate love for a "bonnie lassie," and melts into tenderness over a crushed daisy or a broken mouse's nest. With the prayerful he prays, with the toper he rants, and with the truly "merry" he can "sing psalms." Gifts that were distributed among many other penmen were happily combined in him. Would that we could always see Burns in the purer and generous light of his earlier days, in his youthful manliness and integrity. Would that we could always think of him as swayed by the better feelings of even his later life ; when, for instance, those feelings prompted him to say in a letter to a lady, whose manners and principles reproved him at times, "I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew on a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul, like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the ^olian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities—a God that made all things—man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave." It would be pleasant indeed ever to have the poet before us, warm with the feeling which moved him when he wrote—

But deep this truth impressed my mind,

Through all Hia works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind

The most resembles God.

Or kindling into the still more devout spirit of his little gem of a psalm—

0 Thou, the first, the greatest friend

Of all the human race!
Whose strong right hand has ever been

Their stay and dwelling-place.

Before the mountains beaved their heads

Beneath Thy forming'hand;
Before this ponderous globe itself

Arose at Thy command,

That power which raised and still upholds

This universal frame;
From countless unbeginning time

Was ever still the same.

Those mighty periods of years,

Which seem to us so vast,
Appear no more before Thy sight

Than yesterday that's past.

Thougiv'st Thy word, Thy creature, man,

Is to existence brought;
Again Thou sayest, "Ye sous of men,

Return ye into nought."

Thou layest them, with all their cares,

In everlasting sleep;
As with a flood Thou tak'st them off

With overwhelming sweep.

They flourish like the morning flower,

In beauty's pride arrayed;
But, long ere night, cut down it lies,

All withered and decayed.

But shadows sometimes gather around the memory of this departed genius; shadows that even to this day dim the moral life of scenes in which that memory is cherished. It is not pleasant to doubt of any human life, whether the good it bequeathed is equal to the mischief it entails. But Burns is gone, as all the sons of genius must go, hallowed or unhallowed; gone with the "flood," as he himself psalmed it, or as "Watts, with more sublimity, renders the same truth—

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,

With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,

And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the opening day.

Like flow"ry fields the nations stand,

Pleas'd with the morning light;
The flow'rs, beneath the mower's hand,

Lie with'ring ere 'tis night.

The fragment of this psalm .which Burns has left is precious, were it only to show how a master of his own pure native English can succeed in imitating the crystallike beauty and simple grandeur of an ancient Hebrew hymn, even though his own heart never realized full sympathy with the higher spiritual feeling of the original Psalmist. "The Spirit of the Psalms" has been more happily caught in later times by one whose own spirit had learnt deeply to converse with the author of holiest inspiration. Quietly toiling in a sea-side parish of South Devon, about thirty years ago, a devout and gentle-minded parson consecrated his poetic genius to the work of providing "an appropriate Manual of Psalmody" for the use of the Church. With characteristic modesty, he tells us that he "simply endeavoured to give the'*/»># of each psalm in such a compass as the public taste would tolerate, and to furnish, sometimes, when the length of the original would admit of it, an almost literal translation; sometimes, a kind of spiritual paraphrase; and at others, even a brief commentary on the whole psalm." He published his collection under the title of "The Spirit of the Psalms." What he wrote he taught his flock to sing, and beautiful was it to find Henry F. Lyte leading the psalmody of his congregation by singing with them his own metrical versions. One Sunday morning, in the summer of 1838, his church was crowded with seafaring men and their families. He took for his text the Saviour's words to the boatmen of Galilee, "Oast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find ;" and he began by saying: "The affecting and interesting sight which presents itself here to-day induces me to select a subject directly suitable to our dear fishermen, whom I so rejoice to meet in the house of God this morning. There is surely not one person present who does not partake of the emotions which I feel in standing up among such a body of my parishioners, and who will not excuse me for addressing myself on this occasion almost exclusively to them." Then followed a faithful and touching appeal to those who saw God's "wonders in the deep," and then this beautiful and appropriate version of Psalm xlvi. :—

The Lord is our refuge, the Lord is our guide;

We smile upon danger, with Him at our side:

The billows may blacken, the tempest increase,

Though earth may be shaken, His saints shall have peace.

A voice still and small by His people is heard,

A whisper of peace from His life-giving word.

A stream in the desert, a river of love,

Flows down to their hearts from the Fountain above.

Be near us, Redeemer, to shield us from ill;
Speak Thou but the word, and the tempest is still.
Thy presence to cheer us, Thy arm to defend,
A worm grows almighty with Thee for a friend.

The Lord is our helper; ye scorners, be awed!
Ye earthlings, be still, and acknowledge your God.
The proud He will humble, the lowly defend;
0 happy the people with God for a friend!