Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.

Psalm CXXXVII

XLIV. Francis Davison

BY Euphrates’ flowry side

We did bide,

From deare Judah far absented,

Tearing th’ aire with mournful cries,

And our eies

With their streames the streame augmented:

When poore Sion’s doleful state,

Desolate,

Sacked, burned, and enthralled,

And thy temple spoil’d, which we

Ne’er should see,

To our mirthles mindes we called.

Our mute harpes, vntun’d, vnstrung,

Vp we hoong

On greene willowes neare beside vs,

When, we sitting so forlorne,

Thus in scorne

Our prowd spoilers ’gan deride vs:—

Come, sad captives, leaue your groans,

And your moanes

Vnder Sion’s ruynes bury;

To your harps sing vs some layes

In the praise

Of our God, and let’s be merry.

Can, ah! can we leaue our groanes,

And our moanes

Vnder Sion’s ruynes bury?

Can we in this land sing laies

To the praise

Of our God, and here be merry?

No, deare Salem! if I faile

To bewaile

Thine affliction miserable,

Let my nimble joynts become

Stiffe and nombe,

To touch warbling harp vnable.

Let my tongue lose singing skill;

Let it still

To my parched rooffe be glewed,

If in either harpe or voice

I rejoyce,

Till thy joyes shall be renewed.

Lord, plague Edom’s traitrous kind;

Beare in mind

In our ruyne how they revell’d:

Kill, sack, burne! they cride out still,

Sack, burne, kill;

Downe with all, let all be levelled!

And thou, Babel, when the tide

Of thy pride,

Now a flowing, falls to turning,

Victor now, shalt then be thrall,

And shalt fall

To as lowe an ebb of mourning.

Happie man, who shall thee wast

As thou hast

Vs without all mercie wasted,

And shall make thee tast and see

What by thee,

Wee, poor wee, haue seene and tasted!

Happie, who thy tender barnes

From the armes

Of their wayling mothers tearing,

’Gainst the walls shall dash their bones,

Rutheles stones

With their braynes and blood besmearing.