The Poems of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey: Frederick Morgan Padelford: Revised Edition |
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| 54. | 54 PSALM 55. |
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 | The Poems of Henry Howard |  |
54 PSALM 55.
Giue eare to my suit, Lord! fromward hide not thy face.Beholde, herking in grief, lamenting how I praye.
My fooes they bray so lowde, and eke threpe on so fast,
Buckeled to do me scathe, so is their malice bent.
Care perceth my entrayles, and traueyleth my spryte;
The greslye feare of death enuyroneth my brest;
A tremblynge cold of dred clene ouerwhelmeth my hert.
“O!” thinke I, “hadd I wings like to the symple doue.
This peryll myght I flye, and seke some place of rest
In wylder woods, where I might dwell farr from these cares.”
What speady way of wing my playnts shold thei lay on,
To skape the stormye blast that threatned is to me?
Rayne those vnbrydled tungs! breake that coniured league!
For I decyphred haue amydd our towne the stryfe:
Gyle and wrong kept the walles, they ward both day and night;
And whiles myscheif with care doth kepe the market stede;
Whilst wickidnes with craft in heaps swarme through the strete.
Ne my declared foo wrought me all this reproche;
By harme so loked for, yt wayeth halfe the lesse,
For, though myne ennemyes happ had byn for to prevaile,
I cold haue hidd my face from uenym of his eye.
It was a frendly foo, by shadow of good will,
Myne old fere and dere frende, my guyde, that trapped me;
Where I was wont to fetche the cure of all my care,
And in his bosome hyde my secreat zeale to God.
Such soden surprys quicke may them hell deuoure,
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My prayer shall not cease from that the sonne disscends
Till he his haulture wynn and hyde them in the see.
With words of hott effect, that moueth from hert contryte,
Such humble sute, O Lord, doth pierce thy pacyent eare.
It was the Lord that brake the bloody compackts of those
That preloked on with yre to slaughter me and myne.
The euerlasting God whose kingdom hath no end,
Whome, by no tale to dred he cold divert from synne,
The conscyence vnquyet he stryks with heuy hand,
And proues their force in fayth whome he sware to defend.
Butter fales not so soft as doth hys pacyence longe,
And ouer passeth fine oyle, running not halfe so smothe;
But when his suffraunce fynds that brydled wrath prouoks,
He thretneth wrath, he whets more sharppe then any toole can fyle.
Friowr, whose harme and tounge presents the wicked sort
Of those false wolves, with cootes which doo their ravin hyde,
That sweare to me by heauen, the fotestole of the Lord,
Who though force had hurt my fame, they did not touch my lyfe;—
Such patching care I lothe as feeds the welth with lyes.
But in the thother Psalme of David fynd I ease:
Iacta curam tuam super dominum et ipse te enutriet.
| The Poems of Henry Howard | |