O Lord, turn not Thy face away
From him that lies prostrate,
Lamenting sore his sinful life,
Before Thy mercy-gate.
Which gate Thou openest wide to those
That do lament their sin,
Shut not that gate against me, Lord,
But let me enter in.
And call me not to mine account,
How I have livèd here;
For then I know right well, O Lord,
How vile I shall appear.
I need not to confess my life,
I am sure Thou canst tell,
What I have been, and what I am,
I know Thou knowest it well.
O Lord, Thou knowest what things be past,
And eke the things that be;
Thou knowest also what is to come,
Nothing is hid from Thee.
Before the heavens and earth were made,
Thou knowest what things were then,
As all things else that have been since
Among the sons of men.
And can the things that I have done,
Be hidden from Thee then?
Nay, nay, Thou knowest them all, O Lord,
Where they were done and when.
Wherefore with tears I come to Thee,
To beg and to entreat,
Even as the child that hath done ill,
And feareth to be beat.
So come I to Thy mercy-gate,
Where mercy doth abound,
Requiring mercy for my sin,
To heal my deadly wound.
O Lord, I need not to repeat,
What I do beg or crave:
Thou knowest, O Lord, before I ask,
The thing that I would have.
Mercy, good Lord, mercy I ask,
This is the total sum,
For mercy, Lord, is all my suit,
Lord, let Thy mercy come.
With Sternhold and Hopkins began the reign of the metrical Psalter.
The attempt to turn the whole book of Psalms into verse for
congregational use has had a curious fascination. No one has attained
more than very partial success, not even Watts or Keble. In Julian’s
long list of those who have essayed to render the Psalms into English
verse, are many names upon which one lingers with interest. Queen
Elizabeth, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Archbishop Parker, Sir Philip Sidney and
his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, Bishop Hall, George Wither,
George Herbert, George Sandys, John Milton, General Fairfax, Richard
Baxter, Joseph Addison, Cotton Mather, Christopher Smart, and great
numbers in more recent times.
Of the multitude of these forgotten psalms the majority, even of the
best, are but literary curiosities, myriads are not even curious, they
are simply dull. A few little-known psalms of these early days I quote
either for their own or their authors’ sake. The following by Queen
Elizabeth is characteristically vigorous in expression. I have
modernized the spelling—