The Psalms, Translated or Paraphrased in English Verse ::

Fix'd on the holy Mountains stand
Thy deep foundations: Jacob's Land,
Throughout its wide-extended coasts,
No City, beauteous Sion, boasts,
Whose hallow'd gates have shar'd, like thine,
The favour of the hand divine.

214

Thee God the Mansion of his rest,
And Seat of Empire has confess'd,
While thus aloud to latest days
His heav'nly Edict speaks thy praise.

Amidst the Souls that own my sway,
And learn my precepts to obey,
Thy Sons, O Nile, shall find a place,
And Babylon's accepted Race;
Nor thine, O Tyre, nor, Midian, thine,
Nor whom Philistia's bounds confine,
Excluded from my thought shall stand,
But mix with Sion's sacred Band.
Each tenant of the peopled Earth
Shall claim from Her his happy birth:
Aliens no more, within her Seat
Behold th' united Myriads meet,
And joyous tread her blest Abode,
The Israel and the Heirs of God:
That God, whose pow'r upholds her State,
And seals to endless time her date.
When on the page, whose wide extent
Shall Adam's num'rous Line present,
Each Kindred, Family, and Tribe,
Th' eternal Censor shall inscribe,
His hand th' adopted Names shall there
Thy Natives, Solyma, declare,

215

And bid them with thy Sons reside,
In concord's strictest bands allied.

Hark, how the trump, and tuneful tongue,
The sacred Jubilee prolong,
To notes of loudest triumph rise,
And echo to the distant skies:
While I (thy Maker, God, and King,)
I, Salem, bid the living Spring
Amid thee yield its copious store,
And crown with health thy happy shore.

University of Virginia Library

PSALM LXXXVII.