The psalms :: :: University of Virginia Library

Troublous seas my soule surround:
Save, O God, my sinking soule,
Sinking, where it feeles noe ground,
In this gulph, this whirling hoale.
Waiting aid, with ernest eying,
Calling God with bootlesse crying:
Dymm and dry in me are found
Eye to see, and throat to sound.

Wrongly sett to worke my woe
Haters have I, more then haires:
Force in my afflicting foe
Bettring still, in me impaires
Thus to pay, and leese constrained,
What I never ought or gained;
Yet say I: thou God dost know
How my faultes and follies goe.

Mighty Lord, lett not my case
Blank the rest that hope on thee:
Lett not Jacobs God deface
All his friends in blush of me.
Thyne it is, thyne only quarrell
Dightes me thus in Shames apparell:
Note, nor spott, nor least disgrace,
But for thee, could taint my face.

To my kynn a stranger quite,
Quite an alian am I grown:
In my very bretherens sight
Most uncar'd for, most unknown;
With thy temples zeale out-eaten,
With thy slanders scourges beaten,
While the shott of piercing spight
Bent at thee, on me doth light.

134

If I weepe, and weeping fast,
If in sackcloth sadd I mourn,
In my teeth the first they cast,
All to Jeast the last they turn;
Now in streetes, with publique prating,
Powring out their inward hating:
Private now at banquetts plac't,
Singing songs of wyny tast.

As for me to thee I pray,
Lord, in tyme of grace assign'd:
Gratious God, my kindest stay,
In my aid be truly kind.
Keepe me safe unsunck, unmyred
Safe from flowing foes retyred:
Calme these waves, these waters bay,
Leave me not this whirlpooles pray.

In the goodness of thy grace,
Lord, make answere to my mone:
Ey my ill, and rue my case,
In those mercies told by none.
Lett not by thy absence languish
Thy true server dround in anguish.
Haste, and heare, come, come apace,
Free my soule from foemens chase.

Unto thee what needes be told
My reproch, my blott, my blame?
Sith both these thou didst behold,
And canst all my haters name.
Whiles afflicted, whiles hart-broken,
Waiting yet some frendshipps token,
Some I lookt would me uphold,
Lookt: but found all comfort cold.

Comfort? nay (not seene before)
Needing food they sett me gall:
Vineager they fil'd me store,
When for drinck my thirst did call.
O then snare them in their pleasures,
Make them, trapt ev'n in their treasures,
Gladly sadd, and richly poore,
Sightlesse most, yet mightlesse more.

135

Downe upon them fury raine
Lighten indignation downe:
Turne to wast, and desert plaine,
House and pallace, field and towne.
Lett not one be left abiding
Where such rancor had residing;
Whome thou painest, more they paine:
Hurt by thee, by them is slaine.

Causing sinne on Synne to grow,
Add still Cyphers to their summ.
Righter lett them never goe,
Never to thy justice come
But from out the booke be crossed,
Where the good men live engrossed:
While my God, me poore and low,
High shall mount from need and woe.

Then by me his name with praise,
Gladsome praise, shall be upborne
That shall more Jehova please
Then the beast with hoofe and horne.
With what joy, yee godly grieved
Shall your harts be then relieved?
When Jehova takes such waies
Bound to loose, and falne to raise?

Laud him then O heav'nly skies,
Earth with thine, and Seas with yours:
For by him shall Sion rise,
He shall build up Juda's towres.
There his servantes, and their races,
Shall in fee possesse the places:
There his name who love and prize,
Stable stay shall eternize.