University of Virginia Library

Psalme XC.

[O thou the Father of us all]

[Part 1.]

O thou the Father of us all,

As the 34.

Our refuge from th'Originall;
That wert our God, before
The aëry Mountaines had their birth,
Or Fabricke of the peopled Earth;
And art for evermore.

But fraile man, daily dying, must
At thy Command returne to Dust:
Or should he Ages last;
Ten thousand yeares are in thy sight
But like a quadrant of the Night,
Or as a Day that's past.

He by thy Torrent swept from hence;
An empty Dreame, which mocks the Sense;
And from the Phansie flies:
Such as the beauty of the Rose,
Which in the dewy Morning blows,
Then hangs the head and dies.

Through daily anguish we expire:
Thy anger a consuming Fire,
To our offences due.
Our sinnes (although by Night conceal'd,
By shame, and feare) are all reveal'd,
And naked to thy view.

---

112

Thus in thy wrath our yeares we spend;
And like a sad discourse they end,
Nor but to seventy last:
Or if to eighty they arrive,
We then with Age, and Sicknesse strive;
Cut off with winged haste.