Fair Puritan hands once held this dingy little book, honest Puritan eyes
studied its ill-expressed words, and sweet Puritan lips sang haltingly but
lovingly from its pages. This was "Cicely Morse Her Book" in the year 1710,
and bears on many a page her name and the simple little couplet:--
"In youth I praise
And walk thy ways."
And pretty it were to see Cicely in her praiseful and godly-walking youth,
as she stood primly clad in her sad-colored gown and long apron, with a
quoif or ciffer covering her smooth hair, and a red whittle on her slender
shoulders, a-singing in the old New England meeting-house through the
long, tedious psalms, which were made longer and more tedious still by the
drawling singing and the deacons' "lining." Truly that were a pretty sight
for our eyes, and for other eyes than ours, without doubt. Staid Puritan
youth may have glanced soberly across the old meeting-house at the fair
girl as she sung the Song of Solomon, with its ardent wording, without any
very deep thought of its symbolic meaning:--
"Let him with kisses of his mouth
be pleased me to kiss,
Because much better than the wine
thy loving-kindness is.
To troops of horse in Pharoahs coach,
my love, I thee compare,
Thy neck with chains, with jewels new,
thy cheeks full comely are.
Borders of gold with silver studs
for thee make up we will,
Whilst that the king at's table sits
my spikenard yields her smell.
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