Psalm 109 Deus laudem
Since thus the wicked, thus the fraudulent,
Since liers thus enforce my blame:
O God, God of my praise,
Be not in silence pent:
For their malitious wordes against me raise
Engins of hate, and causelesse battry frame.
Causeless? ay me! quite contrary to cause
My love they doe with hate repay:
With treasons lawlesse spight
They answer frendshipps lawes,
And good with ill, and help with harme requite:
What resteth now, but that to thee I pray?
I pray then what? that lorded at command
Of some vile wretch I may him see:
That fittly still his foe
To thwart his good may stand:
That, judg'd, from judgment he condempn'd may goe,
Yea to his plague, his praier turned be:
That speedy death cutt off his wofull life,
Another take his place and port:
His children fatherlesse,
And husbandlesse his wife,
May wandring begg, and begg in such distresse,
Their beggred homes may be their best resort:
That usurers may all he hath ensnare,
And strangers reape what he hath sowne:
That none him friend at all,
None with compassions care
Embrace his brood, but they to wrack may fall,
And, falne, may lye in following age unknowne:
That not his owne alone, but ev'ry cryme
Of fathers and forefathers hand,
May in God's sight abide:
Yea, to eternall tyme,
Synne of his mother and his mothers side,
May in his mind, who is eternall, stand:
That he and they soe farre may be forgott,
That neither print of being leave
What humane nature will;
For he remembred not,
But sought a wretch inhumanly to spill
And would of life an humbled hart bereave.
He loved mischief; mischief with him goe:
He did noe good; then doe him none,
Be wretchednes his cloake,
Into him soaking soe,
As water dronken inwardly doth soake,
As oile through flesh doth search the hidden bone.
Be woe, I say, his garment large and wide
Fast girt with girdle of the same.
Soe bit it, be it aye,
Such misery betide
Unto all such as thirsting my decay
Against my soule such deadly falshood frame.
But thou, O Lord, my Lord, soe deale with me
As doth thy endlesse honor fitt:
And for thy glories sake
Let me deliverance see,
For want and woe my life their object make,
And in my brest my hart doth wounded sitt.
I fade and faile as shade with falling sunn:
And as the Grasshopper is tost,
Place after place I leese;
While fast hath nigh undone
The witherd knotts of my disjoynted knees,
And dried flesh all juyce and moisture lost.
Worse yet alas! I am their scorne, their nod,
When in their presence I me show;
But thou, thou me uphold,
My Lord, my gratious God:
O save me in thy mercies manifold,
Thy hand, thy work, make all men on me know.
They curse me still, but blesse thou where they curse:
They rise, but shame shall bring them downe.
And this my joy shall be,
As bad disgrace, or worse,
Shall them attyre then ever clothed me,
Trailing in trayne a synfull shamefull gowne.
Then, then will I Jehovas workes relate
Where multitudes their meeting have:
Because still nigh at hand
To men in hard estate
He in their most extreamities doth stand,
And guiltlesse lives from false condempners save.
