PSALM 146. (L. M.) Praise to God for his Goodness and Truth.
I
Praise ye the Lord, my heart shall join
In work so pleasant, so divine,
Now while the flesh is mine abode,
And when my soul ascends to God.
II
Praise shall employ my noblest powers,
While immortality endures;
My days of praise shall ne'er be past,
While life and thought and being last.
III
Why should I make a man my trust?
Princes must die and turn to dust;
Their breath departs, their pomp and power
And thoughts, all vanish in an hour.
IV
Happy the man whose hopes rely
On Israel's God: he made the sky,
And earth and seas with all their train,
And none shall find his promise vain.
V
His truth for ever stands secure;
He saves th'opprest, he feeds the poor;
He sends the labouring conscience peace,
And grants the prisoner sweet release.
VI
The Lord hath eyes to give the blind;
The Lord supports the sinking mind;
He helps the stranger in distress,
The widow and the fatherless.
VII
He loves his saints, he knows them well,
But turns the wicked down to hell:
Thy God, O Zion, ever reigns;
Praise him in everlasting strains.
This psalm consists so much in single sentences, that a small and
easy transposition of the verses, with a very few lines added, will
afford a metre to the tune of the cxiiith psalm, with a repetition of
the first stanza at the end to complete the tune, as follows.
