"Thrice happy they who shall behold
And listen in that age of gold
As by the plough the laborer strays
And carman 'mid the public ways
And tradesman in his shop shall swell
The voice in psalm and canticle,
Sing to solace toil; again
From woods shall come a sweeter strain,
Shepherd and shepherdess shall vie
In many a tender Psalmody,
And the Creator's name prolong
As rock and stream return their song."
Though these words seem prophetic, the gay and volatile Marot could never
have foreseen what has proved one of the most curious facts in religious
history,--that from the airy and unsubstantial seed sown by the French
courtier in such a careless, thoughtless manner, would spring the
great-spreading and deep-rooted tree of sacred song.
Little volumes of the metrical rendering of the Psalms, known as "Tate and
Brady's Version," are frequently found in New England. It was the first
English collection of psalms containing any smoothly flowing verses. Many
of the descendants of the Puritans clung with affection to the more literal
renderings of the "New England Psalm-Book," and thought the new verses were
"tasteless, bombastic, and irreverent." The authors of the new book were
certainly not great poets, though Nahum Tate was an English Poet-Laureate.
It is said of him that he was so extremely modest that he was never able
to make his fortune or to raise himself above necessity. He was not too
modest, however, to dare to make a metrical version of the Psalms, to write
an improvement of King Lear, and a continuation of Absalom and Achitophel.
Brady--equally modest--translated the Aeneid in rivalry of Dryden. "This
translation," says Johnson, "when dragged into the world did not live long
enough to cry."
Such commonplace authors could hardly compose a version that would have a
stable foundation or promise of long existence. But few of Tate and Brady's
hymns are now seen in our church-collections of Hymns and Psalms. To them
we owe, however, these noble lines, which were written thus:--
"Be thou, O God, exalted High,
And as thy glory fills the Skie
So let it be on Earth displaid
Till thou art here as There obeyed."