These psalms of Marot's are written in a great variety of song-measures,
which seem scarcely as solemn and religious as the more dignified and even
metres used by the early English writers. Some are graceful and smooth,
however, and are canorous though never sonorous. They are pleasing to read
with their quaint old spelling and lettering.
In the old Sigourney psalm-book the nineteenth psalm was thus rendered:--
"Les cieux en chaque lieu
La puissance de Dieu
Racourent aux humains
Ce grand entour espars
Publie en toutes parts
L'ouvrage de ses mains.
"Iour apres iour coulant
Du Saigneur va parlant
Par longue experience.
La nuict suivant la nuict,
Nous presche et nous instruicst
De sa grad sapience"
Another much-employed metre was this, of the hundred and thirty-third
psalm:--
"Asais aux bors do ce superbe fleuve
Que de Babel les campagnes abreuve,
Nos tristes coeurs ne pensoient qu' a Sion.
Chacun, helas, dans cette affliction
Les yeux en pleurs la morte peinte au visage
Pendit sa harpe aux saules du rivage."
A third and favorite metre was this:--
"Mais sa montagne est un sainct lieu:
Qui viendra done au mont de Dieu?
Qui est-ce qui la tiendra place?
Le homine de mains et coeur lave,
En vanite non esleve
Et qui n'a jure en fallace."
Marot wrote in his preface to the psalms:--
"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.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197