Among other learned writers who have with different success attempted versions of the Psalms, ranks the celebrated Dr. Donne. Mr. Mitford has inserted his version of Psalm cxxxvii, one of the most beautiful and delicate of those sacred compositions, and at the same time one of the most difficult to a lyrical translator. The last verse, more especially, is scarcely susceptible of a rendering at once faithful and poetical. Dr. Donne's begins thus:

By Euphrates' flowry side
We did bide,

From dear Judah far absented,
Tearing the air with our cries,
And our eyes

With their streams his stream augmented.
• When poor Sion's doleful state,
Desolate,

Sacked, burned, and inthralled,
And the temple spoiled, which we
Ne'er should see,

To our mirthless minds we called:

Our mute harps, untuned, unstrung,
Up we hung,

On green willows near beside us,
Where, we sitting all forlorn,

Thus, in scorn

To my parched roof be glewed,
If in either harp or voice
I rejoice,

Till thy joys shall be renewed.'

Milton also attempted this psalm, although his version of it does not appear in his works. We have a copy of a version attributed at least with great probability to his pen, which was set to music by his friend Lawes. It begins:

Sitting by the streams that glide
Down by Babel's tow'ring wall,
With our tears we filled the tide,

While our mindful thoughts recal
Thee, O Sion, and thy fall!'

Another writer of the seventeenth century, who has given a version of this psalm, is Norris, Rector of Bemerton, whose name ought not to be unknown to Mr. Mitford; and yet, we cannot suppose that, if he had seen the volume, he would have His version is proneglected to avail himself of its contents. fessedly a paraphrase, and he stops at the seventh verse. Although somewhat inflated, it comes nearer, we think, in dignity of style, to the proper character of such compositions; it errs by being too paraphrastic.

Beneath a reverend gloomy shade,

Where Tigris and Euphrates cut their way,
With folded arm, and head supinely laid,
We sate, and wept out all the tedious day:
Within its banks grief could not be
Contain'd, when, Sion, we remember'd thee.

Our harps with which we oft have sung
In solemn strains the great Jehovah's praise,
Our warbling harps upon the trees we hung,
Too deep our grief to hear their pleasing lays.
Our harps were sad as well as we,

And, tho' by angels touch'd, would yield no harmony.

But they who forced us from our seat,

The happy land, and sweet abode of rest,
Had one way left to be more cruel yet,

And ask'd a song from hearts with grief opprest.
Let's hear, say they, upon the lyre,

One of the anthems of your Hebrew quire.

'How can we frame our voice to sing
The hymns of joy, festivity, and praise,
To those who're aliens to our heavenly King,
And want a taste for such exalted lays?
Our harps will here refuse to sound;
An holy song is due to holy ground.

No, dearest Sion, if we can

So far forget thy melancholy state,

As, now thou mourn'st, to sing one cheerful strain,
This ill be added to our ebb of Fate:

Let neither harp nor voice e'er try

One hallelujah more, but ever silent lie.'

Bishop Mant has not been more successful in his version of this beautiful psalm, beginning:

By Babel's streams we sat and wept ;
Our thoughts, O Zion, dwelt on thee;
Meanwhile our harps in silence slept
Aloft on many a willow tree.'

This might have been written, certainly, by a very early poet. Dr. Watts, in his juvenile days, attempted the same difficult task, but he appears to have been so little pleased with his performance that he rejected it from his Lyric Poems; and in his Psalms and Hymns, the cxxxviith Psalm is passed over. It will be found in his Reliquiæ Juveniles," and begins

thus:

When by the flowing brooks we sat,
The brooks of Babylon the proud,
We thought on Zion's mournful state,

And wept her woes, and wailed aloud.'

This is better, we admit, than W. W.'s performance in that which is emphatically called the Old Version, by Sternhold, 'Hopkins, and others.'

When we did sit in Babylon

the rivers round about,
Then in remembrance of Sion
the tears for grief burst out.
We hang'd our harps and instruments
the willow trees upon;

For in that place men for their use
had planted many a one.'

Compare these sacred travesties with the simple and inimitable beauty of the original:

"By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion.

"As for our harps, we hanged them up, upon the trees that are therein.

"For they that led us away captive, required of us then a song, and melody in our heaviness: Sing us one of the songs of Sion. "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"

By what strange fatality is it, that, in attempting to throw

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these unimproveable expressions (if we may be allowed the word) into a lyrical shape, as if they as much refused the aid of rhyme as the harp of Judah refused to give forth its harmony at the bidding of the proud Chaldeans,-every one has hitherto failed to preserve the beauty or genuine character of the original? Rhyme is a sad tyrant when, instead of being the mere handmaid of the Muse, she passes herself off for Poetry, and, like other usurpers, begins her reign with the murder of her lawful sovereign. There is something ominous in the very words 'done into verse: the phrase might lead us to expect that the psalms would be-done for. Yet, it is surely not impossible to subordinate rhyme so far that it shall no more interfere with simplicity or beauty of expression, or mar the dignity of sacred compositions, than the laws and modulations of harmony. Why should a psalm be deprived of its character by being set to verse, any more than by being set to music?

As a paraphrase of this psalm, the following very pleasing stanzas of Anne Countess of Winchelsea (1713) have considerable merit.

• Proud Babylon! thou saw'st us weep;
Euphrates, as he passed along,

Saw, on his banks, the sacred throng
A heavy, solemn mourning keep:
Sad captives to thy sons and thee,
When nothing but our tears were free.

A song of Sion they require,
And from the neighb'ring trees to take
Each man his dumb, neglected lyre,
And cheerful sounds on them awake;
But cheerful sounds, the strings refuse,
Nor will their master's griefs abuse.

'How can we, Lord, thy praise proclaim,
Here, in a strange, unhallowed land!
Lest we provoke them to blaspheme
A Name, they do not understand;
And with rent garments, that deplore,
Above whate'er we felt before.

But thou, Jerusalem, so dear!
If thy lov'd image e'er depart,
Or I forget thy sufferings here;
Let my right hand forget her art;
My tongue her vocal gift resign,

And sacred verse no more be mine!"

This digression has led us away from our immediate subject.

Yet, as we have been led to mention Norris as a poet, and as his volume is, we believe, but little known, we shall gratify our readers with some fairer specimens of his poetical talents from his original compositions.

'On seeing a great Person lying in state.

'Well, now 1 needs must own
That I hate greatness more and more;

'Tis now a just abhorrence grown,

What was antipathy before.

With other ills I could dispense,

And acquiesce in Providence;

But let not Heaven my patience try

With this one plague, lest I repine and die.

I knew, indeed, before,

That 'twas the great man's wretched fate,
While with the living, to endure
The vain impertinence of state:
But sure, thought I, in death he'll be
From that and other troubles free:
Whate'er his life, he then will lie
As free, as undisturbed, as calm as I.
But 'twas a gross mistake;
Honour, that too officious ill,

Won't even his breathless corpse forsake,
But baunts and waits about him still.

Strange persecution, when the grave

Can't the distressed martyr save!

What remedy can there avail,

Where death the great Catholicon does fail ?

Thanks to my stars, that I

Am with so low a fortune blest,
That whate'er blessings Fate deny,

I'm sure of privacy and rest.

"Tis well, thus long I am content,

And rest as in my element.

Then, Fate, if you'll appear my friend,

Force me not 'gainst my nature to ascend.

'No, I would still be low,

Or else I would be very high,

Beyond the state which mortals know,
A kind of semi-deity.

So, of the regions of the air,

The high'st and lowest quiet are ;

But 'tis this middle height I fear,

For storms and thunders are engendered there.'