PSALM CXXXIX.

  O Lord, in me there lieth nought
    But to thy search revealed lies;
          For when I sit
          Thou markest it;
    No less thou notest when I rise: 
  Yea, closest closet of my thought
    Hath open windows to thine eyes.

  Thou walkest with me when I walk
    When to my bed for rest I go,
          I find thee there,
          And every where: 
    Not youngest thought in me doth grow,
  No, not one word I cast to talk
    But, yet unuttered, thou dost know.

  If forth I march, thou goest before;
    If back I turn, thou com’st behind: 
          So forth nor back
          Thy guard I lack;
    Nay, on me too thy hand I find. 
  Well I thy wisdom may adore,
    But never reach with earthy mind.

  To shun thy notice, leave thine eye,
    O whither might I take my way? 
          To starry sphere? 
          Thy throne is there. 
    To dead men’s undelightsome stay? 
  There is thy walk, and there to lie
    Unknown, in vain I should assay.

  O sun, whom light nor flight can match! 
    Suppose thy lightful flightful wings
          Thou lend to me,
          And I could flee
    As far as thee the evening brings: 
  Ev’n led to west he would me catch,
    Nor should I lurk with western things.

  Do thou thy best, O secret night,
    In sable veil to cover me: 
          Thy sable veil
          Shall vainly fail: 
    With day unmasked my night shall be;
  For night is day, and darkness light,
    O father of all lights, to thee.

Note the most musical play with the words light and flight in the fifth stanza.  There is hardly a line that is not delightful.

They were a wonderful family those Sidneys.  Mary, for whom Philip wrote his chief work, thence called “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia,” was a woman of rare gifts.  The chief poem known to be hers is called Our Saviour’s Passion.  It is full of the faults of the age.  Sir Philip’s sport with words is so graceful and ordered as to subserve the utterance of the thought:  his sister’s fanciful convolutions appear to be there for their own sake—­certainly are there to the obscuration of the sense.  The difficulty of the poem arises in part, I believe, from corruption, but chiefly from a certain fantastic way of dealing with thought as well as word of which I shall have occasion to say more when we descend a little further.  It is, in the main, a lamentation over our Saviour’s sufferings, in which the countess is largely guilty of the very feminine fault of seeking to convey the intensity of her emotions by forcing words, accumulating forms, and exaggerating descriptions.  This may indeed convince as to the presence of feeling, but cannot communicate the feeling itself. The right word will at once generate a sympathy of which all agonies of utterance will only render the willing mind more and more incapable.