Psalm Translation

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Psalm Culture in the English Renaissance: Readings of Psalm 137 by Shakespeare, Spenser,Milton, and Others

Author(s): Hannibal HamlinSource: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 224-257Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512536 .

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PsalmCulturen theEnglishRenaissance:

ReadingsfPsalm137 byShakespeare,penser,

Milton,and Others*by HANNIBAL HAMLIN

Psalm137, "Byhe Watersof Babylonwesat downand wept,"oneof the mostwidelyknown

biblical extsn RenaissanceEngland, rovidedonsolationorspiritual ndpolitical xiles, s well

asgiving Shakespeare, penser, nd Milton language n which to expressuchalienation

language speciallyowerfulfor oets, ince hepsalmtroped lienationas theinability osing.ThePsalmsclosing ry or vengeance,eenasun-Christianysome,wasusedas a call to armsby

polemicists n bothsidesof theEnglishCivil War.Thisstudyexamines rangeof translations,

paraphrases,ommentaries,ermons,ndliteraryllusionshattogethereconstructbiblical ext

as it wasinterpretedy ts Renaissanceeaders.

1. By the riversof Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we

rememberedZion.

2. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and theythat wasted us requiredof us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs

of Zion.4. How shall we sing the Lord'ssong in a strangeland?

5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,let my right hand forget her cunning.6. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;

if I prefernot Jerusalemabove my chief joy.7. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem;who said,

Rase it, raseit, even to the foundation thereof.

8. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;happy shall he be, that

rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

9. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.'

*Forhelpfuladviceat variousstages n the research ndwritingof thisarticle, would

like to thankJohnHollander,ThomasM. Greene,PaulaLoscocco,LawrenceManley,Anna-belPatterson,DavidQuint, JohnN. King,andmyRQreaders,DianeKelseyMcColley,PG.

Stanwood,andPaulF Grendler.

'As an initialreminder f the text of Psalm137, I reproduce ere the KingJamesVer-

sion (spellingandpunctuationmodernized), ince it is probablyhe Renaissanceranslation

mostwidelyknownamongmodernreaders.This is not to imply,of course, hatit was so inthe Renaissance. orreadersn sixteenth-andseventeenth-centuryngland, he best known

versionwould have been that of the Book of Common Prayer,which wasessentially hetranslation f the 1539 GreatBiblebyMilesCoverdaleandwhichwasactuallyhesourceof

much of the language f the laterKJV ext).

RenaissanceQuarterly55 (2002): 224-257 [224]



PSALM CULTURE IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 225

he Reformationpened he door to bothvernacularranslation ndin-dividual interpretation of the Bible, and one of the immediate and

lasting results was a widespread "psalm culture," in which poets, theolo-

gians, and devoted dilettantes produced hundreds of translations,

paraphrases,and adaptationsof the psalms, as well as meditations, sermons,

and commentaries. Countless others turned to the psalms for inspiration,consolation, entertainment, and edification, in the spirit of Richard

Hooker's question, "What is there necessarie for man to know which the

Psalmes are not able to teach?"2 No book was read in this period more

widely or deeply than the Bible, and of the many biblical books, none was

betterknown or more influential than the Psalms,especiallyfor poets, since,as Hooker put it, "The choice and flower of all thinges profitable in other

bookes [of scripture] the psalmes doe expresse, by reason of that poeticallforme wherewith they are written."3 The entire Psalter was read througheach month in the worship services of the English Church, at which, by or-

der of the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity (1559), attendance was

compulsory. Of the Psalms, none was more widely read, quoted, translated,

paraphrased,and alluded to than Psalm 137.The history of the interpretation of this biblical lyric - here unavoid-

ably partial, since the influence of the psalm was confined by neither

national nor period boundaries4 - provides a case study of the ways in

which the Bible was made meaningful to its sixteenth- and seventeenth-cen-

tury readers, or rather of the ways in which they, many of them writers,made it meaningful by a process of creative interpretation analogous to the

imaginative commentaries of Jewish Midrash. James Kugel has recently ar-

gued that to understand a biblical culture (and this holds true of post-Reformation England as of ancient Israel)scholarsmust read not just the Bi-

ble, the relatively stable literary document that sits on the desk or libraryshelf, but the "interpretedBible," the Bible as it was read, understood, and

2Hooker,150.

3Ibid.Clearlyt is the literaryqualityof the Psalms, heirpoweraspoetry, hat Hookerseesasdecisive.

4The focus of thisstudy s Psalm137 in England,butsimilar tudiescould be donefor

other countries.See, for instance,Di Mauro and Creel. Forevidenceof the popularityofPsalm137amongFrenchpoets,seethe 1606 Parispublication f Frenchparaphrasesf Psalm

137 by ClementMarot,PhilippeDesportes,JacquesDavyDu Perron,GuillaumeDu Vair,AntoineNerveze,and others cited nCave,97, n.1).Thepsalmalsocontinued o drawpoets,amongothers, ongafter he seventeenth entury.Fora fewexamples mongmany:Christo-

pherSmartwrotea boldparaphrasef thepsalm,LordByronparaphrasedt twice,HeinrichHeine's"Jehuda enHalevy"s a powerfulpoeticresponseo itsexpression f exiledlongingforrevenge,he Finnish omposer eanSibelius etto musicaparaphraseythepoetHjalmarProcope,andJohnHollander's oem"Kinneret"s anextendedmeditationon the psalm.



RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

applied by its earlyreaders.5To some extent, this "interpretedBible" remainsas inaccessible as its long-dead interpreters, but some of these interpreterswere also writers of translations,paraphrases,commentaries, sermons, or al-

lusive poems and plays. In these documents their interpretationssurvive. By

gathering enough of them together, and focusing on one short but crucial

biblical text, it is possible to reconstruct if not exactly a history then at least

an anthology of informative anecdotes that comes close to recapturing the

"interpretedPsalm 137."

STREAMS AND TEARS

"Byhe watersofBabylonwe sat downeandweapte. 6

This opening verse marks Psalm 137 as a lament, expressingthe grief of the

Israelites over the fall of Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C.E., after theywere led away captive to Babylon. The riversidesetting of the psalm was felt

to be appropriateto its subject, and Renaissancetranslatorsoften exploitedthe close connection between the two streams of water, the river and the

tearsof the weeping Jews.The usual reading,explicit in the psalm itself, was

that the tears were triggered by memory (we wept "when we remembred

Zion" in the King James Version), with the parallel between flowing tears

and flowing streams an accidental, if fortuitous, one. FrancisBacon, for ex-

ample, begins with the Jewssitting "sadand desolate"beside the river.At the

end of his second stanza the "streamof tears" hat burstsforth from the eyesof the exiles seems to match and respond to the streamon whose banks theysit.7Some versions of the psalm link the waters more closely, as does Francis

Davison's, whose mourners "with their streames his [Euphrates'] streame

augmented,"or Thomas Carew's, n which the weepers "filde the tyde"with

their tears.8The idea for this pouring of water into water might easily occur

to many poets independently, but the Countess of Pembroke seems to have

been the first to exploit it. In her version, the river"watrethBabells thanck-

full plaine"and the "teares n pearled rowes"augment the "waterwith their

5Kugel,1997,xv.

6Ps.137:1, in Coverdale'sranslation romthe GreatBible(1539). Unless otherwise

noted,allcitationsof psalms romthemajorBible ranslations refromWright.

7Bacon,284-85. Publishedn 1625, Bacon's salmswerededicated o GeorgeHerbert.

8Davison,424. Davison'spsalmswerenot published the principal ource s Harleian

Manuscript o. 6930 in the BritishLibrary), uthis Psalm137 is included n Grierson'sd.of Donne, to whom it was formanyyearsattributed.Carew,149. LikeDavison's,Carew's

psalmswere not publishedduringhis lifetime. His Psalm137 wasset to musicby HenryLawesandprinted n the 1655 SelectPsalms fa New Translation.eeSpink,2000, 126-29,

226




raine."9The thankfulness of the plain here is a curious addition, especiallywith the use of "raine,"which suggests God's equable raining "on the justand on the unjust" (Matt. 5:45). We hardly expect the tears of the exiles to

be figured as bounty nourishing the land of Babylon, but perhaps this is to

be readbitterly as a form of exploitation.More in keeping with the conventional conception of the antagonistic

relationship between Israel and Babylon, though singular in its representa-tion of it, is SirJohn Oldham'sgreatlyexpanded paraphrase,where the "vast

Store" of the tears "increast theneighb'ring

Tide." In thepoem's openinglines the "great Euphrates" is said with its "mighty current" to "confine"

Babylon "in watry limits."1?The implications here seem to fit better what

we expect the feelings of the Jews to be toward Babylon, and the metaphor,in effect, inverts the captor-captive relationship of the two, the Jews' tears

serving not to water the thirsty Babylonian ground but to increasethe walls

of its naturalconfines, to bind it in. In John Saltmarsh's"Meditation I," on

Ps. 137:1, the relationship between the tears and the streams is one of opencontest:

... oh howyour ountainsgentlyvies

With rivers,eareswithwaves,asif thesedropsMeantto outrunne hine,Babylon!1'

Saltmarsh'snterpretation,like Oldham's,seems to suit the feelings of the ex-

iles better than the Countess of Pembroke's.

The notion of superfluity (perhapssuggested by a bilingual pun on the

familiaropening of the psalm in the Vulgate, superflumina), is highlighted

in several versions, with both the river and the tears bursting their banks.This seems to be what George Wither had in mind when he described the

mourners "overcharg'dwith weepings," as also Richard Crashaw,when he

wrote that "Harpesand hearts were drown'din Teares" which matches and

and also the 1984 recordingby AnthonyRooleyand The Consort of Musicke(HyperionCDA66135). In his programnote to the Hyperionrecording,CliffordBartlettargues hat

the 1655SelectPsalmeswhichalso ncludedpsalm ranslationsyGeorgeSandys)was aRoy-alistpamphlet,markedby the prominentplaceof the Psalmof Exileat the beginningof theselection.

9Pembroke,31.

'0Oldham,140. Oldhamdates hisparaphraseDecember 2. 1676. at Bedington.""

Saltmarsh,1. Saltmarshc. 1610-47) was a parliamentaryhaplainandthe authorof

mystical eligiousworksaswellasthePoemata acra 1636).The italicshereand n allfurthercitationsareoriginal.




parallels "greatEuphrates flood" in his first stanza).12John Norris' para-phraseis more sophisticated in its use of this figureof flooding, blending the

tears and the rivertogether so that we cannot quite tell whether the flood is

literal or figurative:

Beneatha reverendgloomyshade

WhereTigris ndEuphratesut theirway,With foldedarmsand headsupinely aidWesate,andweptout allthe tediousday,

Withinits Banksgriefcouldnot be

Contain'd,when,Sion,we remember'dhee.13

The grief of the Jews is described as a riverbursting its banks, like the one

beside which they sit. Or perhapsthe Babylonianriver not only sympathizeswith but, through an unusual emblematic metonymy, actuallybecomes the

grief of the exiles. More complex still is Edmund Elys'freer treatmentof the

psalm in his Dia Poemata(1655), in which the river(or "rivets," s it is here)is put forwardas an alternativesource of music, and a music more appropri-ate to the Exile than the "lightmirth"of actualsongs:

These rivetsyieldus the fitt'stmusick:we

Accounttheirmurmures urbestharmony:In themthe Emblemeof our fateappears:Theirmurmureshow ourgroans, heirstreams urtears.'4

Once again the streams of the river are linked to those of the mourners'

weeping eyes, the formerrepresentingthe latteras an "Embleme."The "har-

mony" referred to is only in part the actual audible "music" of the

murmuringstream. More importantly,it is the inaudible harmony of a sym-

pathetic "agreementof feeling or sentiment" (OED 2) or even of a more

profound correspondence between different elements in nature, the "har-

mony" between the river and the Israelitespartakingin small measure of the

musicamundana, that "harmony"of mathematicalproportion, describedbyBoethius, which knits all creation together.15

12Crashaw,104-05. Page references will not be given for complete psalters (asWither's),since psalm numbers alone should be sufficient. Editions cited are in the bibliography.Wither (1588-1667), was an extraordinarilyprolific poet and the author of A Preparationto

the Psalter(1619). He waseager

tosupplant

the "Sternhold andHopkins" psalter

with his im-

proved version, but the failureof this plan is markedby the obscure publication of ThePsalms

of David in the Netherlands in 1632.

13Norris,325. Norris (1657-1711) was a poet and philosopher (last of the CambridgePlatonists) and rector of Bemerton (George Herbert's former parish) from 1691.

'4Elys, fol. C4. Elys (born c. 1634) was an Oxford MA and a clergyman, friendly with

the Quakers.

'5Foran extended treatment of this "music,"see Hollander, 1961, 20-51, and Palisca,

161-90.

228




The tearsof this lament suggested to several Renaissancepoets anotherbiblical scene of weeping, that of the personifiedJerusalem n Lamentations,the widow who "weepethsore in the night" (Lam. 1:2, KJV). The connec-

tion between the two passages s obvious enough, apartfrom verbalparallels,since they are both laments on the Babylonian Exile. Psalm 137, in which

the exiled Jews weep on rememberingJerusalembefore its fall, relatespow-

erfully to Lamentations, in which it is the fallen Jerusalem herself who

weeps, mourning the loss of her exiled children. Moreover,in Lamentations,as in the psalm, the mourning is triggeredby memory: "Jerusalemremem-

bered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant thingsthat she had in the days of old" (Lam. 1:7, KJV). For readerswho hear the

echo of Lamentations 1:4,16this intertextual relationship is signalled in

some translations by the striking use of the word "desolate,"as in those of

Bacon ("When as we sat all sad and desolate") and Davison, in whose ver-

sion the Jews hang up their harps:

When, pooreSyonsdolefullstate,Desolate;

Sacked,burnedandinthrall'd,And theTemple poil'd,whichwee

Ne'rshouldsee,To ourmirthlessemindeswee call'd.17

The Widow of Lamentationsmay also lie behind the figureof Mother Jerus-alem in George Sandys'translation ("When I forget thee, my dearmother")and, by implication, in Crashaw's("They,they that have snatcht us from our

Countries brest").18 he is realizedvisually in FrancisQuarles'emblem of Ps.

137: 4 with itsimage

of a womansitting

beside a river(Fig.1).

The woman

is a version of the feminine Anima so familiar from religious emblems, but

Quarles complicates the figure in his poem. First, he confirms that this

"woman" represents the earth-bound soul, a "pilgrim and a pris'ner,"an

"unransomedstranger/ In this strange climate."19This notion seems to be

16"... allhergates redesolate"n theKJV.'7Bacon,84;Davison,24.Davison'sse s of coursehemore trikingfthetwo, he

sharpinebreak ery ffectivelyiguringhedesolationfZion nthe solationf theworditself.

18Crashaw,05.George andys1578-1644)wasafamousravelero theEast nd hetranslatorf Ovid'sMetamorphosesoftendescribedsoneof the irstiteraryorks roducedinAmerica, here andys as orsomeyearsTreasurerftheVirginia ompany)swellasthe translator f the 1636 Paraphrasepon hePsalmesofDavid,widelyadmiredby contem-

porariesor its literarymerit.

'9Quarles,42.Thoughhealsowroteother erse,Quarles1592-1644)was hemostpopularnd nfluentialftheEnglishmblematists.isEmblemes1635)andHieroglyphikesoftheLife fMan 1638)continuedobereprintedsometimesithratheroorversions fthe mages)ntothenineteenthentury.




EMBLEMES

x v .

B2o -. shalla e inr eolg j-e td717 i an

FhcV i 7L */

FIGURE :EmblemXV,book4, FrancisQuarles,Emblemes, ondon,1635.BeineckeRareBook andManuscriptLibrary, aleUniversity.

1M4

230




derivedfrom

Augustine's allegorical readingof the

psalm,which

applies the"stranger n a strange land" topos to the heavenward-yearning of a soul in

earthlyexile.20Quarles then reconfiguresthe symbolism in terms of the clas-

sical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice:

Ah! If myvoicecould,Orpheus-like, nspel

MypoorEuridice,my soul,from hell

Of earth'smisconstruedHeav'n . ..21

The woman is thus Anima (the soul) and Euridice (in the sense that the soul

is captive in "hell" on earth), but she is also the widow from Lamentations,transposed to the riverside scene of the psalm.22Quarles' "pilgrim and a

pris'nertoo" sings from "hell-blackdungeons," just as the singer of Lamen-

tations calls upon the Lord "outof the low dungeon" (Lam. 3:55, KJV), and

the ravens, wolves, and owls of Quarles' "vastdesert" match the desolate

Zion roamed by foxes (Lam. 5:18) and the bears, lions, ostriches, and sea

monsters mentioned elsewhere in the book (3:10, 4:3).23A bolder use of the weeping woman, linking Psalm 137 and Lamenta-

tions, is found in Edmund Spenser'sTheRuinesof Time,partly an elegy forSir Philip Sidney, in which the subject of the first section is that condition of

exile from the classicalpast (in this case, of Rome) which was so fundamen-

tal to the Renaissance.24Here, though, the woman is a demonic parody of

her biblical original. The connection to Psalm 137 and Lamentations 1-2 is

made clear by several allusions, but Verlame, the lamenting, personified

woman-city of Spenser'spoem, is not a version of JerusalemorJerusalem-in-exile but rathera version of what the psalmist looks forward to, that is, an

eye-for-an-eye reduction of Babylon (and Edom) to the ruinous state in

which it has left Jerusalem.25This is especiallyappropriatefor Spenser,since

for late sixteenth-century Protestants"Babylon," n Psalm 137 and Lamen-

20Augustine,857,158-77.Augustineeadshepsalmnterms fhisconcept f"twocities":erusalem,hesoul's eavenlyome,andBabylon,tsearthlyxile.Alengthy assagefromAugustines includednQuarles'mblem, fterhepoem,onthe contrast etweenthosewhopraiseGod rom arthlyxileand hose ortunatenougho be able opraise iminheaven faceo face."

21Quarles,42.

22Asf the emblemwerenotdense nough,hewoman salsoatypeofJob, acedbythree enerable en n robes nd urbansstandingorEliphaz, ildar,ndZophar), hoseem obeofferingonsolation;hereplies,n thepoem'speningine,"Urgeme nomore."

23Quarles,42.

24Thechoes f Psalm 37arenotedbyBraden,7,andManley,68-79.SeealsoCart-mell,77-82.

25As artmellotes,hevision fthefallofBabylonnRev.18:2 is also mportantorthispassage.




tations, as in Revelation, had come to stand for Catholic Rome, and, despitethe initial allusiveparallelto Jerusalem, t is Rome for which Verlamestands,

both as the ancient classicalcity and the contemporary papal one.26

The poet, "beside the shore/ Of silver streaming Thamesis," hinks of

Verlame,the ancient city of Roman Britain which once stood there, but "Of

which there now remaines no memorie," the ultimate revengein the context

of Psalm 137 where the psalmist strugglesto retainmemory of Jerusalem.27Across the river,he sees the forgotten city personified, "AWoman sitting sor-

rowfulliewailing,"

hereyes weeping

"streamesof teares"as sheproceeds

to

tell her story.28Here the figures of Psalm 137 and Lamentations 1-2 are

combined and inverted.The poem contains other ironies, such as the disap-

pearance of the Thames from the vicinity of the town, which Verlame

attributesto "greatgriefe."29n the tradition of translatingand paraphrasingPsalm 137, however,the sympathetic grief of the riveris consistently figured

by images of flooding, mirroring the exiles' tears, not by drying up, which

would suggest the absence of weeping and the river's abandonment of

Verlame.

Perhaps because its riverside setting appealed to the Thames-fixated

Spenser, echoes of Psalm 137 seem to haunt his poetry. No. 8 of the em-

blems in A Theatrefor Worldlings hows "Hard by a rivers side, a wailing

Nimphe," a personification of Rome much like Verlame.30Even Colin

Clout's hanging up of his pipe at the end of TheShepheardesCalendarmaybe a transposition from biblical to pastoralelegy of the gestureof the Jewish

harpersfrom Psalm 137.31PatriciaParkerhas pointed out, furthermore,that

the Israelites' harps (sometimes translated as "instruments") hanging on

26Ofcourse,as Kugelshows,evenfirst-century ewsinterpreted"Babylon" s Rome,

reading he psalmasprefiguringhe destruction f the SecondTemple 1994, 173-74). For

one influentialworkingout of the Rome-Babylonigure n Protestant erms,see Luther's

anti-papalract,On theBabylonianCaptivity fthe Church.ndeed,LutherquotesPsalm137in this context,followedby a puzzlingcurse "May he Lordcursethe barrenwillows of

those streams!" whichmaybeexplained s anallusion o Christ'scursingof the barrenfigtree n Matthew20, interpretedhroughone ofAugustine's eculiarallegorizationsromhis

commentary n Psalm137 (Lutherwas,afterall,anAugustinianriar).Augustinenterpretsthe willowsof Ps. 137:2as men "thoroughly ad," o barren f "true aith andgoodworks"

thattheyarebeyondhope. Of course, n the contextof the crucialReformationdebateonfaithversusworks,Luther'seading fAugustinewouldobviously mphasizeheformer.See

Luther, 09, andAugustine,1857, 163.

27Spenser,32 (Ruines f Time, ines 1-2, 4). On memory, ee below.

28Ibid., 33 (lines9, 12).

29Ibid., 39 (line 141).

30Ibid., 77.31Ibid.,208 ("November,"ine 141, "Herewill I hangmy pype uponthistree").

232




Babylonianreesalso lie behindthe

suspended,and

impotent,weaponsof

theknightVerdant "Hiswarlikearmes, he idle instruments/Of sleeping

praise,werehong upona tree" the victimof the EnchantressAcrasian

book2 of TheFaerieQueene.32his Psalmwasobviouslyone withasingularresonance orSpenser.

HARP MUSIC

"Weangedurharpes ponhewillowesnthemiddeshereof.:3

Perhapshe mostmemorableimage n thispsalm s thehangingof theharpson the treesnearthe river.However,despitethe vividnessof this figure n

the collectivememoryof Englishpoetry, here s somedisagreement bout

whatprecisely hese instrumentswere.The mostcommonEnglishrender-

ingof theHebrewkinnor aninstrumentomething ike a lyre)34s "harps,"but confusionpersistsdue to theVulgate's seof organa, generic ermfor

"instruments"hathas evenbeen rendered ccasionally s the English"or-

gan" a rather umbersomehingto hangon a tree,evenin the medieval

portativeorm.Jeromehimselfdecidedagainstorganan his retranslationfthe PsalterromtheHebrew, hifting o citharas,ndthiswas also thetrans-

lation used n theProtestantLatinBibleofJuniusandTremellius.35omeof

the English ranslators edgedtheirbets,likeWilliamWhittingham,who,for the "Sternholdand Hopkins"psalter, ranslated he word as the pair,

"harps& instruments."36his pairingwas also usedbyWilliam Barton n

his mid-seventeenthenturypsalter,whileMatthewParker's as the equallyambivalent, ut moreawkward, Harpes ndOrgans."The engraver f the

frontispieceoJeremyTaylor's 644PsalterofDavid(Fig.2) offeredan evenwiderrangeof instruments.On either ideof thepenitentialKingDavid are

32Faerie ueene, .12.80, citedin Parker, 5-66. On the translation f the instruments,

see below.

33Ps.137:2,GenevaBible(1560).

34See achs,106-08, and Werner.

35See erome'swo versionsn Lefevre 'ltaples,and theBibliorumparstertia .. trans-

lated by Juniusand Tremellius. Citharawas, moreover, he termfavouredby the Greektranslators f theSeptuagintn theirrendering f kinnor. achsconcludes hat the kinnor nd

citharaweresimilar, mallroundedyreswithstrings uspendedroma horizontal rossbar. s

he notes,the Egyptiansusedthe related erm,k.nn.r for a lyreof this sort(107).

36Theproper itleof "Sternhold ndHopkins"s The WholeBookeofPsalmes.Thiswas

the mostwidelyknown metricalversionof the Psalms n England,beingpublished n over

700 editionsbetween1562 and 1696. Fora studyof the peculiarandimpressive opularityof thispsalter, ee Hamlin.




t..~aia *.... ,t ?-

.ii. lai .i $te. x .

1!1

FIGURE : Frontpieceto JeremyTaylor,ThePsalter fDavid,Oxford,1644. Bei-neckeRareBookandManuscriptLibrary.

234




the familiarharps hanging

in thetrees, signaling

a visual allusion to Psalm

137, but the artist also includes lutes, a viol, a cornett, and a trumpet.37

Accuracy of translationwas not, of course, the only factor in the selec-

tion of instruments. Other poets, notably the emblematists, envisioned the

harpsasvarious members of the string family. In a typicallyRenaissancesyn-cretism, they often melded the biblical characters and narratives with

apparentlyanalogous ones in classicalmythology. Two frequently-linkedfig-ureswere David, inspiredby God, chanting psalmsto the strainsof his harp,and Orpheus, inspired by the muses, singing odes and hymns to the accom-

paniment of his lyre. In the Renaissance, especially after the late-sixteenth-

century vogue for the lute-song, English poets transformed Orpheus' lyreinto a lute, and his songs into ayres.38Francis Quarles' emblem of Psalm

137, as mentioned above, pictures a woman by a riverbank,holding a lute,which she appears to be putting away from herself. Confirming the meta-

morphosis from harp to lute, the poem begins:

Urgeme no more: hisairymirthbelongsTo better imes: hese timesarenot forsongs.The sprightly wangof the melodious ute

Agreesnot with myvoice ... .39

The lute and its songs arerejected,and the implication seems to be that the

rejection is partly on generic grounds. Mirth is "airy" n its lightness, inap-

propriate for the poet's heavy mood, but it is also perhaps "ayrey,"n that it

belongs to the "ayre" r lute-song. In any case, the shift from harp to lute al-

lows Quarles to include in his dismissal the musical recreations familiar to

his Caroline readers.

In Edmund Arwaker'sPia desideria,on the other hand, there is a whole

consort of instruments, all rejected. The first he mentions is the "warbling

Lyre,"which the poet's posited "Friends" his interlocutors in this imaginary

dialogue) suggest is most appropriatefor dispelling grief.4 Then follows an

excursuson the power of music to lift the spirits, using the examples of sail-

37Fordrawingmy attention o this image(imagesof David andhangingharpsaresur-

prisinglycarce),am ndebtedoPaulaLoscocco. oramoredetailedtudy f theimage f

hung-up avidic arpsrom1649-60, eeherforthcomingikonoklasticong:Milton nd

Royalistoetics.380n thehistory f the ute-song,eeSpink,1974,esp.chaps.1and2. Fora detailed

studyof the useof the ute-harp-lyrelusternrepresentationsf musicn English oetry,1500-1700,eeHollander,961,43-51,128-45andpassim.

39Quarles,41.

40Arwaker,51-52.Arwaker'serses"Englished"romheLatinmblem ookofHer-manHugo 1588-1629), ia desideriamblematislegiistaffectibusAntwerp,624),whichalsoprovidedheimagesorArwaker'sersion.




ors, shepherds, travellers,and soldiers, and the music of viols, the lute, thepipe, and the harp. The psalm is followed only loosely by Arwaker;he de-

scribes a more general condition of grief- a kind of emotional exile - at

being "Fortune'swounded Captive." Once an accomplished musician who

"Cou'dwith IsraelssweetestSingervie," his ability is now lost. The poet here

notes that if he were to sing, in his reduced state, "'twou'dbe/ Some doleful

Emblem of my misery."41When, in exile, he thinks on his "lov'dCountry,"the result is that his "Lute,"his "Voice,"and his "Mind"all "lose their har-

mony."42Arwaker uses "harmony," as Elys did, in the sense of musicalconcord and also in the more abstractsense of concord between elements of

the self, what for Boethius and subsequent theorists of musicaspeculativawas termed musicahumana, the smaller-scale human equivalent of musica

mundana.43

If, to various interpretive ends, authors have altered the instrument

hung up by the Israelites,they have also, for similar reasons,altered its con-

dition. Nothing is said of the instruments in the Hebrew psalm (or the

Vulgateor

English Bibles) beyondtheir location in the

trees,but the metri-

cal translators and emblematists could not resist elaborating, usually to

emphasize the sympathetic connection between the instruments and their

owners. Most simply, the harpsare "silent"(JamesI/Sir William Alexander,

G. Sandys), "mute"(Davison), or "dumbe"(Carew), the figurativepoint of

these adjectives being made explicit in the version of SirJohn Denham:44

OurHarps, o whichwe latelysang,Mute asourselves, n Willowshang.

Oldham is similarlydirect, with harps"asmute and dumb as we," and Nor-

ris'harpsare "sad,as well as we."45

Many of the poets are then drawn to say something of the strings of

the instrument. Davison'sharps are also "unstrung,"as are George Sandys',

4'The description f thesceneas "emblem"mayderive romElysor it maysimplyhave

becomea commonplace,especiallyafterQuarles.Saltmarshalso calls the hangingof the

harpsan "embleme."

42Arwaker,51-54.All italicsoriginal.43ThemportanceorMedievalandRenaissancemusictheoryof the tripartite ivision

of musicin Boethius'De InstitutioneMusica s discussed n Hollander,1961, 24-26. I use

these termsthroughout orconvenienceandconsistency, ecognizing hat the conceptsso

designatedmayhave been differentlynamedby some sixteenth-and seventeenth-centurywriters.

44Davison, 24; Carew,149.

45Oldham, 40; Norris,325.

236




Carew's,and Henry King's.46The point of the unstringing may lie in an im-plicit and commonplace Latinpun on corlchorda, inking strings and hearts,

the source of the English idiom "heartstrings."This buried pun is made ex-

plicit in Phineas Fletcher's paraphrase,when the Israelites respond to the

Babylonian requestto "Take down your harps, and string them":

Wereourharpswell tun'd n every tring,Ourheart-stringsroken,Throatsdrown'd ndsoken

With tearsandsighs,how canwe praiseandsingThe Kingof heav'nunderan heathenking?47

Once again, the point of the wordplay is to emphasize sympathy between

the exiles and their harps (and also, of course, the river, n the "drown'dand

soken" throats which play on the "streams-tears"motif). Oldham's para-

phrasemakes the point clear:

OurHarps,as muteand dumbaswe,

Hunguselessandneglectedby,And nowandthena brokenStringwouldlenda Sigh,As if with us theyfelt a Sympathy,And mourn'dheirownand ourCaptivity.48

This passagealso seems to invoke (as the others may in more veiled fashion)the Aeolian harp. This instrument, "played"by the wind as it blows across

the strings, was, in its modern form, invented by Athanasius Kircherin the

seventeenth century, and popularized by poets from JamesThomson to the

Romantics (for whom it was a potent symbol), but its actual origins aremuch earlier.49n fact, a legend recordedin the BabylonianTalmud records

that David used to hang his harp (kinnor) over his bed, and was woken in

the night to the sound of the wind blowing through its strings, whereupon,

inspiredby that music, he would compose psalms.50So the notion, if not the

name, of the "Aeolianharp"is linked from antiquity with the instrument of

the psalmist.The OED does not recorda use of the word "sympathy" n the

46Davison, 24; Carew,149.47Fletcher,53. Fletcher 1582-1650), like his brotherGiles,was one of the "Spense-

rian"poets.His sixmetricalpsalmswere ncluded n theMiscellaniesppendedo ThePurpleIsland 1633)

48Oldham, 40.

49See achs,402-03.

50See TheHebrew-Englishditionof theBabylonianTalmud,hap.I, 3b. I owe this ref-

erence o JohnHollander.




sense of "sympatheticvibration" until the nineteenth century, but that cer-tainly seems to be one of the senses of the word in this passage from

Oldham, used as a figurefor the emotional sympathyof the familiarpathetic

fallacy.51Some poets were particularly drawn to the subject of music in Psalm

137, often playing with familiar musical puns, as in, for example, Salt-

marsh's irst meditation:

No stops

In thissad Musick? ow thesemournerseem,As thoughtheyweptdivisionwith thystream!52

These are relatively commonplace puns but interesting nevertheless.53The

term "stops"can refer to the stopping of a lute string to produce a pitch, as

well as, perhaps,a rank of organ pipes or a set of jackson a harpsichord(the

latter less likely without specific referenceto keyboardinstruments). It mayalso suggest, as well as non-musical cessation, a break or "rest"n the music.

Musical and non-musical meanings also converge in "division,"which refersto musicalvariation,usuallyabove a ground bass,but also to a descant above

a melody, as well as to the less specializedsense of"separation"or even "dis-

agreement"or "conflict" in keeping with the "vying"between the "tearsand

waves" several lines furtheron). Interestingly,Saltmarsh's wo puns work in

opposite directions. In the firstcase, given the context - why areyou weep-

ing so much?- "stops"means primarily"cessation,"and the musical senses

are secondary. In the second, though it is used metaphorically, "division"

means primarily"musicalvariation,"the weeping of the mourners "played"to the accompaniment of the stream. This time the more familiar non-mu-

sical sense is secondary, perhaps occurring even only in retrospect after

Saltmarsh aterintroduces the note of competition between the weepers and

the river.

5'Thephenomenonfsympatheticibration ouldhavebeen amiliaro anystringplayer,as evidencedbyJacobCats' emblemof love assympatheticvibrationbetweentwo

identically-tunedutes,reproducednHollander,961,between 42 and243.Foran En-glishexample,eeWalton, 1, "And,houghtismostcertain,hat woLutes, eingboth

strungnd un'doanequal itch, nd hen,oneplaidupon, heother,hat s nottotcht,be-

ing aiduponaTable t a fitdistance, ill likeanEcchoo atrumpet) arble faint udible

harmony,nanswerothesameune ..."

52Saltmarsh,(italics dded).

53See ollander,961,134and139, or nstance,uoting irJohnDavies'unningn

"Stoppes"ndSidney'sn"divisions,"espectively.

238




One version of Psalm 137 which offers aparticularly

elaboratedevelop-ment of the musical motif is the lute-song "Asby the streames of Babilon"by

England'sonly notable poet-composer, Thomas Campion. His translation

of Psalm 137 appearsin the first of his TwoBookesofAyres(c. 1612-13), the

one containing "Divine and Morall Songs,"which also included his version

of Psalm 130 ("Out of my soules deapth to thee"). Campion's translation is

highly compressed, but by using a dense pun, playing an English word

against its Latin root, he is able to achieve much in little space. The pun oc-

curs in the linesdescribing

theharps:

Aloftthe trees hatspringup there

Our silentHarpswee pensivehung ....54

The wordplay here depends upon the etymology for "pensive" n the Latin

root, pendeo/pendere r "tohang" (Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary,s.v.

pendeo I.B.1).55 The Latin word can also mean "to be suspended, inter-

rupted, discontinued" (Lewis and Short II.C) as well as "to be in suspense,to be uncertain, doubtful, irresolute,

perplexed"(Lewis and Short II.E),

which correspondsto the principal English sense of "pensive" OED 1 "Full

of thought; plunged in thought; thoughtful, meditative, musing; reflective:

often with some tinge of seriousness or melancholy"). The immediate ety-

mology of "pensive" s actually from the Frenchpenser, meaning simply "to

think," but Campion'splay against the ultimate Latinetymon allows him to

combine the physical situation of the harpswith the mental state of the cap-tiveJews in a complex figureof sympathyor "harmony."The complexity lies

partlyin a rather Miltonic

syntactic ambiguity (derivingfrom Latin

syntax),which allows "pensive" o modify either, or both, of the two words which it

follows, "Harps"and "wee."Strictly speaking, the harps and the exiles are

"pensive" n different ways, the former in the Latin sense of "hanging"and

the latter in the English (and French) sense of "thoughtful,"but the senses

blend together and Campion'sharpsarealso "pensive" n the same way that

Norris' are "sad," haring the mental state of their owners.56

54Campion,4.55Thisun snotednHollander,975,80.

56Ithould enoted hatEdwin andysparliamentarian,onof theArchbishopf thesamename,andelderbrother f George,he more amousranslatorf psalms) lsouses"pensive"nhisparaphrasef Psalm 37,butwithout hecomplexityf Campion'sord-

play:"Ah,Sionswrongso pensivemindsappear. ."SinceSandys' acred ymnswas

publishedn 1615,however,emayhaveborrowedheword romCampion'sarlierubli-cation ndhad ome ense f thebilingual un.




REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

"If forget hee,0 Ierusalem:etmyrighthandforget ercunning.IfI doenot rememberhee, etmytongue leave o theroofe f mymouth;

if Iprefernot Ierusalem bovemychiefeoy. 57

Memory is at the heart of Psalm 137. The Jews struggle to keep alive their

memory of Jerusalem n exile in Babylon, and to this end the psalmistvows

that if he forgetsJerusalemhis right hand should "forgether cunning." Fur-

thermore, he prays to God to remember "the children of Edom" and their

role in the destruction of Jerusalem.He doesn'telaborate,but it seems clear

that this "remembering"s equivalentto vengeance and destruction:for God

to "remember" he Edomites is for him to cast their actions back on their

own heads. These verses were bound to appeal specifically to poets, for the

obvious reasonthat the "cunning"of the "righthand"- the psalmist'sabil-

ity to play-sing-write - is of paramount importance to a writer. Some

translators read the verse more narrowly,as does Matthew Parker(not, of

course, a poet), whose "I would my hand: went out of kinde:/ to play to

pleasurethem" calls for only a temporary lapse of skill to frustratethe Baby-lonians' desirefor entertainment. More characteristic s the generaland total

forgetting called for in Edwin Sandys'paraphrase:

Letparched ongto witheringpalatgroweAnd skilfulhandno morehis scienceknowe.58

The Latinate "science"here is also interesting, since it includes both specifictechnical masteryand knowledge in the broadersense (OED 2b or perhaps

3d and 1). Crashaw'sparaphraseof this verse knits together music and mem-ory so as to suggest that Jerusalemis the basis of the psalmist'smusic:

Ah theeJerusalem!hsoonermayThis handforget he mastery

Of Musicksdainty ouch,thenI

The Musickeof thy memory.59

The central concern of Psalm 137 with memory, and the essential con-

nection between memory and poetry or song, may also lie behind Crashaw's

choice, as well as Fletcher'sand Oldham's, to translate the psalm into the-

form of a Pindaric ode.60The analogy between Hebrew and Greek literary

57Ps.137:5-6,KJV 1611).58E. andys,25.

59Crashaw,05.

60TheormoftheEnglish indaricsusually nly oosely ased n itsoriginal,onsist-

ingmainly f a series f stanzasf irregularine engths. eeFogle ndFry.

240




forms, basedalways

on anignorance

of the actual structureof Hebrewpo-etry,goes back at least to Jerome'squestion, "What is more musical than the

Psalter?which, in the manner of our Flaccus or of the Greek Pindar, now

flows in iambs, now ringswith Alcaics, swells to a Sapphic measure or moves

along with a half-foot?"61erome'sauthority may lie behind Isaac Watts' re-

markaccompanying his own translation of Psalm 137, that "Had Horace or

Pindar written this Ode, it would have been the endless Admiration of the

Critick, and the perpetual Labour of Rival Translators."62 ut the connec-

tion between psalms and odes may be more basic. Both words derive from

Greekmusical terms, "psalm" rompsalmos,a song sung to a plucked instru-

ment, and "ode" from aeidein, to sing or chant. More importantly, the

origins of the English ode seem to lie in a sense of longing for the lost "pres-ence of voice" - as it inhered in the Greek hymns and the Hebrew psalms- which Paul Frydescribes:

Byimitatinghymnody .. anode reveals tsconceptionof ahymnas a being-

present o a transcendent,riginary oice. The aim of theode is to recover nd

usurp hevoice to whichhymnsdefer:not merely o participaten thepresencebut to be the voice.63

He writes further that

Like hehymn,theodeor"hymnextempore"ongsforparticipationn thedi-

vine, but it never participates communally, never willingly supplies a

congregationwith commonprayerbecause t is bent on recovering priestlyrole that is not pastoralbuthermetic.64

Fry is principally concerned with the Romantic ode and with a few of its

precursors in the seventeenth century (by Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton,and John Milton), and the distance between hymn and ode, which the nine-

teenth-century poet longs to bridge, may be a common feature of these. For

Renaissance poets translating Psalm 137, however, there was no such dis-

tance, since the psalm is hymn and ode simultaneously.This may be part of

the reason so many seventeenth-century poets were drawn to the Psalms,and to Psalm 137 in particular, ince it expressesthe very problem which Fry

argues is basic to the ode: how can I sing the Lord'ssong in exile (cut off

from the "presenceof voice" essential to any notion of inspired poetry). Bywriting the psalm as an ode, or, conversely,casting their odes in the form of

Psalm 137, the poets are able both to express the anxiety of loss and to re-

61From Prefaceo Eusebius,"itedin Kugel,1981, 152.

62Watts, eliquiaeuveniles1734), cited in Davie,211.

63Fry, .

64Ibid., .




capturethe "presenceof voice." This presencederivesfrom the psalm'sstatusas Scripture, all of which is conceived of as, to some degree, divinely in-

spired. The psalm also enables the recapturing of the "communal

participation" longed for (according to Fry) by later writers of odes, since

there is a residual echo of common prayerin the psalmist'smemory of tem-

ple worship, as well as a continuing connection between the psalms and the

liturgy due to their use in the Christianworship service.

The desire to reach back, to convert memory to presence so as to hear

and even tojoin

in with theprimal heavenlysong

is afrequent

recurrence n

Milton'spoetry.65One such recurrence nvolves a briefbut crucialallusion to

Psalm 137. In book 3 of ParadiseLost the heavenly choir of angels sings a

hymn of praise to the Fatherand the Son after the latter has offered to re-

deem the sin of Adam by sacrificing himself, "deathfor death."66As Diane

McColley points out, the song is a broadparaphraseof or extended allusion

to the TeDeum Laudamus.67The TeDeum itself incorporates several allu-

sions to the psalms in its final section, however, and it seems not to have

been remarkedthat Milton's "TeDeum" follows suit.68Milton'shymn closes

with an allusion to Ps. 137:5-6:

... thyName

Shallbe the copiousmatterof mySongHenceforth,and never hallmy Harpthypraise

Forget,nor fromthyFather'spraisedisjoin.69

65Milton'sde"On heMorningf Christ'sativity,"or nstance,ivents ownchap-

ter n Fry'study,sconcerned ithmemoryndmusic.When hepoetcalls"Ring utyeCrystalpheres"o that"Timewillrunback,and etch heageofgold," e has nmindascene fsinging, when f oldthesonsofmorningung,/While heCreator reat/Hiscon-stellationset" seeMilton,46). Thepoemattemptsmore hana simplerecollection,however.Milton'sall o theMuseo "preventhem the"Star-led izards"]ith hyhum-bleode,"which s of courseMilton'swn ar romhumble ne,uses"prevent"na Latinatesense fpraevenire,o comebeforeMilton, 3).Amore adicalemporalisplacementhanmere ememberingeems obeimplied.

6Milton,263(PL.3.212).

67McColley994.Themost xplicit llusionsreMilton's HeeHeav'n f Heavensnd

allthePowersherein3.390)and"thy ear ndonlySon" 3.403) seeMilton, 67,268).TheTeDeum,nCoverdale'snglish,as"To heealAngels ryaloud,heheavens ndallthepowersherein,"nd"Thyhonourable,rue,andonely onne"First ndSecondrayerBooks,2,23).

6Thepsalm erses lludedo inthe TeDeum re28:9, 114:2,123:3,33:22,31:1and71:1.SeeJulian, 120-21. ulianraces llusionso theVulgaten theLatin ersion f the

hymn.

69Milton, 68.

242




Like the psalmist, Milton vows never to forget his proper subject, the praiseof God (in this case figured by God's name rather than the name of Jerusa-lem as in Psalm 137). Milton is setting himself up as a psalmist, and his

"hymn"as a psalm.70The psalms are of course primarily praise-songs, as indicated by their

collective Hebrew title, tehillim, or "praises."The allusion to Psalm 137 in-

volves more, however, than simply a generic markingof Milton's inset poem.In both the TeDeum and Milton's "hymn"there is a shift in voice between

firstperson plural

andsingular.

The TeDeumbegins

with commonprayer

("We") and ends with an individual petition, "O Lorde, in thee have I

trusted:let me never be confounded."71Milton'sshifting pronouns are more

complicated, since they effectivelyblur the distinction between reportedand

direct speech. He begins with the former,signalled by "firstthey sung," but

then shifts inexplicably to the latter,with "thyName/ Shall be the copiousmatter of my song," only to snap back to third person at the end ("Thus

they in Heav'n").72The point seems to be that Milton actually joins in the

heavenlychoir at this

point,or at least would like to.73This marks the cru-

cial difference between Milton's condition and that of the psalmist. While

the latter is writing in exile, Milton has, at least through his bold conceit,

come "home" in the most profound sense. The Augustinian reading of

Psalm 137 is implicit in this maneuver- the "exile"which Milton has over-

come in reaching back in time and up into heaven being that of the soul

from its home in the heavenly city.The other notable shift from the original

psalm that Milton works in his allusion is one of genre:the psalmistsings an

elegy,a lament for his state, and, anxious about the

possibilityof

forgetting,vows to rememberJerusalem,calling on God to make him "forgethis skill"

if he forgets;Milton sings a hymn of praise in joy and confidence, without

any hint of the danger of forgetting either his best subject or his poetic skill.

70TheTeDeumsets itselfup in muchthe sameway,a patristichymnposingasa psalm,bothbymeansof the allusions o psalms n its final sectionand also in themythof its spon-taneousandinspiredcompositionbyAmbroseandAugustineat the latter'sbaptismby the

former.Seethe article"Tedeum laudamus"nJulian.

71FirstndSecond rayerBooks, 2, 23.72Milton, 67, 268.

73This s muchthe samestrategy e uses n "Ata SolemnMusick," t the end of which

he looks forward"tillGod erelong/ Tohis celestial onsortus unite,/To live withhim, and

singin endlessmornof light" Milton,82). The firstdraftof thispoem, rejected robably e-

causeof its extremepresumption,ndedwith"To iveandsingwith him "ratherhan "To ive

withhim, andsing."Miltonwould liketo be singingalongsideof God, but, at thisstageofhis career,hisseemsbrasheven to him.




STRANGERS IN STRANGE LANDS

"How hallwesyngeheLordessongen a straungeande?"74

The psalmist'sanxiety about the loss of memory is at the heart of Psalm 137,

and the source of this danger is the forced exile of the psalmist and his peo-

ple from their true home, which is another focus of interest for those

translating,paraphrasing,or alluding to this psalm (especiallygiven the cul-

tural and spiritual alienation at the heart of both the Renaissance and

Reformation, movements of renewal and rebirthfounded on the rediscoveryand reappropriationof pastcultures that remained to some extent irredeem-

ably lost).75For those souls who, like Augustine, longed for their heavenly

home, it matteredlittle where they were on earth. William Loe's 1620 Songs

ofSion, for instance, a collection of metricalparaphrasesand meditations on

psalms and other scripture,was "set for the ioy of gods deere ones, who sitt

here by the brookes of this worlds Babel, & weepe when they thinke on

Hierusalem which is on highe."76Other writers felt a more earthly home-

sickness, however, for the obvious reason thatmany

of them were actual

exiles from their home countries. Coverdale, Whittingham, and Crashaw

were all, for extended periods, living in exile on the continent, the first two

as a result of their Protestant beliefs at times when England was officially

Catholic, and the last, a Catholic among Protestants, for just the oppositereason. Indeed, even Loe's sense of exile may have been more worldly than

his long-title suggests,since he was writing to those, like himself, "of the En-

glish nation residing at Hamborough [Hamburg]."77Even if not everyone

experienced physical exile, the fear of being forced to live in a foreign coun-

try, away from family, friends, and, especially, one's native language, was a

powerful one, powerfully expressedin the familiarpsalm.Alienation from the native language seems to have been a source of par-

ticularanxiety,as is implied in Henry King'stranslation of Ps. 137:4:

Buthow shallwe singthe LordsSong,His Enemiesamong?

Or tuneHis Notes in strangers and,That cannotunderstand?

74Ps.137:4,Coverdale's reatBible,(1539).

75On he Renaissanceumanists'enseof alienation romthe classical ulture o which

they weredrawn,see Greene,esp. chap.2, "HistoricalSolitude;"on the alienationof six-

teenth-centuryReformersromtheearlyChristian hurchandtheirattempt o overcomehis

alienationbywritingahistoryof the truechurch hrough he MiddleAges,see Cameron.

7fLoe, ig. +4.

77Ibid.

244




The psalmist's roblemhere seems not one of singing templesongsbeforeheathenBabylonians s it is, for instance, n Campion'sayre("Isthen the

song of our God fit/ To be prophan'dn a forraine and?"),but ratherof

singing o anaudience hatdoesn'tknow thelanguage.78 ing'socuson lan-

guagemayderive rom a traditional onflationof BabylonandBabel,based

primarilyon the fact that the latter s the Hebrewnamefor the former.79

However, ince the storyof Babel n Genesis11 concerns he fall from an

original inguisticunityto aconfusionof tongues,many nterpretersf laterbiblicalreferenceso

Babylonead ntothemthe concernwith

languagend

confusionof the etiologicalBabelaccount.Once again,this traditionmayoriginatewith thetypological eadinghabitsofAugustine,who recounts he

storyof the Fallof the toweras the earlyhistoryof Babylon:"That s whythe name Confusion'wasgivento thecity;because t was herethatthe Lordconfusedthe languagesof all the earth."80 he use of "Babel" ather han

"Babylon"n several ranslations f Psalm137 (theCountessof Pembroke's

quotedabove,EdwinSandys', ndWither's,orexample)mayecho theearly"history" f the city in Genesis11, thoughthe disyllabicnamemaysome-

times alsojust be a metricalconvenience. Fletcher s moreexplicit in his

paraphrase:

So shallthytowers

And allthyprincelybowers,Proud Babel, fall ....81

He not only adds the towersto the psalm'sBabylonian ityscape,but em-

phasizesprideasthesin whichwillbringabouttheirfall,justasit did in the

traditionalnterpretationf the Babelstoryin Genesis.82 imilarechoes ofthe fall of Babeloccur n Davison("And,houBabel,when thetide/ Of thypride")and Carew("Sittingby the streames hat Glide/ Downe Babells

Towringwall").83

7Campion,74. Of course,whatthe Babyloniansannot"understand"probably lso n-cludes the cultureand the religiousbeliefsandpracticeswhichgo alongwith the language,but the linguistic trangenesseems he primary ensehere,fromwhich theothersderive.

79SeeHallo.

80Augustine,972, 656. For hehistoryof Babel'sall,see bk. 16, chaps.4-5.

81Fletcher,53.

82Theanguagehere s similar o thatof theangelannouncing he fall of Babylonn thesection on the fall of Lucifer n Fletcher'sPurple sland 1633): "Babel,proudBabel'sall'n,and lies as low asground" inGrierson ndBullough,217). Inthiscase,there s a further y-

pologicalextension o the fall of Babylonn Revelation,whichalsorecountshe defeatof the

greatdragonSatan 12:9).

83Davison, 26; Carew,149.




The Babel story'sfocus on language may also have been what suggestedto Shakespeare he appropriatenessof Psalm 137 as an expressionof the En-

glishman's anxiety about living among those who don't know English. He

incorporates an allusion to the psalm at a key point in RichardII. In act 1,

scene 3, after Richardhas banished him for life, Mowbray laments his sen-

tence in what amounts to an inset paraphraseof Psalm 137:

The language have earnt hesefortyyears,MynativeEnglish,nowI mustforgo,

And nowmytongue'suseis to me no moreThan anunstringed iol or a harp,Or like a cunning nstrument as'dup-Or beingopen, put into his hands

Thatknowsno touch to tune theharmony.Withinmy mouthyou haveengaol'dmy tongue,Doublyportcullis'd ithmy teethandlips,And dullunfeelingbarrenignoranceIsmademygaoler o attendon me.

I am too old to fawnupona nurse,Too far n years o be a pupilnow:

What is thysentence henbutspeechless eath,Which robsmy tonguefrombreathing ativebreath?84

The image of the unstrung harp to which Mowbray compares his "tongue"in foreign exile is familiar from many translations of Ps. 137:4 (compare

George Sandys' "oursilent harps, unstrung"). The "cunninginstrument"

and the ignorant "hands"of the playerallude to verse 5 (the Bishops Bible

version, "letmy right hande forget her cunning"). The imprisonment of thetongue behind "teeth and lips"derives from verse 6, "Letmy tongue cleave

to the roof of my mouth" (in the Geneva Bible version which Shakespearemost often used). Mowbray's ament is his own psalm of exile.

Psalm 137 seems to have been on Shakespeare'smind as he wrote Rich-

ard II, since he alludes to verse 6 again near the end of the play, when

Aumerle seeks Bolingbroke's forgiveness for his involvement in treasonous

plotting:

Forevermay mykneesgrowto theearth,My tonguecleave o myroof withinmy mouth,Unlessa pardonereI riseorspeak.

(5.3.29-31)85

84Shakespeare,1.SubsequentitationsromRichardI willbe from hisedition, ndact, cene nd inenumbers illbegivenn thetext.

85This llusionsnotedbybothShaheen118)andNoble 158).

246




Richard IIbegins

with the double banishment ofMowbray

andBoling-broke, and these images of exile may have suggested the relevanceof Psalm

137 to Shakespeare, but he may also have felt it appropriate to the play's

largerconcerns with England as nation and homeland, the problems of goodand bad rule, and the effect of a bad king on the health of the realm. Rich-

ard's reign is presented as a kind of fall from Paradise, most famously in

Gaunt's prophesy of Richard's transformation of England's "blessedplot,"the "otherEden, demi-paradise," nto "atenement or pelting farm"(2.1.50,

42, 60). (Interestingly, York'sreport of Gaunt's death shortly after this

speech contains another echo of Psalm 137: "His tongue is now a stringlessinstrument" [2.1.149].) This "fall"of England is also represented n terms of

the fall of Jerusalemin act 1 scene 2, when Gloucester's widow mourns her

fallen manor (Plashy, with its appropriately watery name), expressing her

own bereavement, and, by extension, that of the realm- all due to Rich-

ard'ssins:

Alack,andwhatshallgoodold York heresee

Butempty odgingsandunfurnish'd alls,

Unpeopledoffices,untrodden tones,Andwhat hear here or welcomebutmygroans?Therefore ommendme;let him not come thereToseek out sorrow hatdwellseverywhere.Desolate,desolate,will I henceand die:

The last leaveof theetakesmyweepingeye.(1.2.67-74)

The Duchess is another version of the widow that "wepeth continually in

the night" in Lamentations, the ruined Jerusalempersonified. The allusionis here markedby the same key word from Lamentations (discussedabove in

relation to Bacon'sand Davison's translations of Psalm 137): "Desolate, des-

olate."86As noted above, the linking of the laments for Jerusalemin Psalm

137 and Lamentations 1 was traditional. The England of RichardII, like the

biblical Jerusalem, is in ruins because of the sins of her people and, espe-

cially,her king. There is, furthermore,a sense that this ruin is a kind of exile

from itself, a condition of bondage imposed by the country's rightful king

(Northumberland refers to Richard'smisrule at 2.1.291 as a "slavishyoke,"suggesting, with the psalm in mind, a "Babylonian"captivity). It is also in-

triguing, given the longing of the exiled psalmist for a return to Jerusalem,that the new king, Bolingbroke, believes the complete restoration of the

kingdom requiresa pilgrimage - to Jerusalem. He is ultimately unable to

make the journey and so passesthe burden of atonement on to his son. Yet

86See Lam.1:1-4,GenevaBible(1560).




he doesdie,

in ironic fulfillment ofprophecy,

in the"JerusalemChamber"of WestminsterAbbey.

Like Shakespeare,many of his contemporaries also read Psalm 137 in

political terms, though in this period, as in that of the psalm'soriginalJewishreaders, the "political"almost invariably included aspects of the religious.

Whittingham's translation, written in exile in Geneva during Mary'sreign,introduces a political note in verse 4 that was followed by many subsequenttranslators:

Alas(saydwe)who canonceframe,his sorrowfull artto syng:The prayses f ourlovingGod,

thus undera straungekyng?

In this case, the problem for the psalmist is not language or religion but the

king, though for Whittingham the problem with the "king"(Queen Mary)was her religion. Similar terminology is used in the translation penned byWilliam Barton during the Interregnum. Barton's version is heavily in-

debted to the "Sternhold and Hopkins" psalter, but Whittingham'semphasis on the "straungeking"would have appealed to the Puritan Barton

for obvious reasons, even though the two translatorshad different kings in

mind. Bacon'stranslation also includes a "foreignking," but his point seems

to be to contrast singing in exile on earth under an earthly, and therefore

"foreign," king, with singing in Zion, the "seatand dwelling place" of the

true king, Jehovah ("Hierusalem, where God his throne hath set.")87

Fletcher renders this contrast more explicit:

With tearsandsighs,howcan we praiseandsingThe Kingof heav'nunderanheathenking?88

Norris' refusal to sing "tothose who're aliens to ourHeavenlyking" picks upon the same motif but shifts the emphasis back from the political to the

religious.89Another use of Psalm 137 as a song of primarily political exile is Ed-

mund Waller's, in his poem "To Sir William Davenant upon his first two

books of Gondibert,written in France."Waller,the translatorof at least one

psalm (104), converts the story of the exiled Israelites nto one in which theyare simply unable to sing in a foreign country. By reversing it he is able to

give Davenant an original compliment:

87Bacon,85.

s8Fletcher,53.

89Norris,26.

248




The droopingHebrewsbanish'dharpsunstrungAt Babylon,uponthe willowshung;Yours oundsaloud,andtell'susyou excell

No lessin Courage, hanin Singingwell

Whilst unconcern'dyou let your Countryknow,

Theyhaveimpoverishedhemselves, ot you.90

There is no suggestion in this thoroughly secularretelling of the psalm that

the "Hebrews" were silent by choice and for religious principles; they are

representedas simply unable to sing abroad. Davenant is the more remark-

able, since he can sing even in exile. Of course, the comparison cannot bearmuch scrutiny since, asWallerimplies, Davenant was banished byhis coun-

try not justfrom it. Waller's curse a few lines further along may also be

derived from Psalm 137, with its call for mimetic revenge on Edom and

Babylon, though once againWaller'spoint is secularrather than religious:

To banish hose who with such art cansing,Is a rudecrimewhich its own Cursedoesbring.91

Davenant was in exile because hewas,

like Wallerandmany

others in Paris

at the time, a Royalist. Waller'suse of Psalm 137 to praisehis friend seems

ratherplayful, but other Royalists turned to the psalm more seriously, and

without emptying it of its religious connotations. The most powerful use of

the psalm by the king's party is in the Earl of Clarendon's Contemplationsand reflectionsupon the Psalmsof David, written, at least by the author's ac-

count, in 1647, while he was in exile on the Isle of Jersey,just as Charles I

was at that time in a state combining exile and captivity on the Isle of

Wight.92Clarendon indicates in his title that he will apply the psalms "to the

Troubles of the Times," and in none of his contemplations is this applica-tion more poignant than the one on Psalm 137. He focuses on love of

country as the basis for the pain of exile: "They who have not a very strongAffection of Heart for their Country, cannot love any other Thing, hardlyGod himself."93The aim of the piece is to emphasize the parallelconditions

90Waller,66.

91Ibid.,167.

92Theworkwaspublished ong afterthis, so whetherClarendon's ccount of the cir-

cumstances f thecompositionof the Contemplationsan betrusteds anopen question.The

datingof the work to December26, ratherappropriatelyhe feast of St. Stephen,the first

martyr,maybecause or further uspicion. t is alsonoteworthy hat,thoughthe titleof theworkreads"Jersey. ec. 26. 1647,"the preface o his childrendescribes heworkashavingbegunin Spain,"inthe time of a formerBanishment."Whatever he details, he importantpoint,clearly,s thatClarendonwished he Contemplationso be associatedwiththe Royalistexile,and that Psalm137was useful o him in making hisassociation.

93Clarendon,45.




of the Israelites after the Babylonian conquest and of Englishmen loyal toKing CharlesI afterhis defeat by the Parliamentarians.To this end he quotesfrom Isaiah,who seems in this context a prophet of the English Civil War,"YourCountry s desolate, our Cities are burnt with Fire,and it is desolatedas

overthrownby Strangers."94 larendon's reading of Psalm 137 is entirely in

terms of his own condition:

To haveescaped hepresentSlaughter,nd fled fromtheCalamity,mighthave

been lookedupon as Safety,at leastas a Reprieve,which alwaysadministers

some Hope;but when therewasto be no morereturning, nd thattheywhogot awaywerenevermore to see theirNativeCountry, heywere ookeduponin a betterCondition,who lost theirLivesat home,and it wasthoughta Pre-

fermentto be buried n their own Country.To ask of thosewho arecarried

awaycaptiveout of it, to be merry,s theInsolenceof a proudConqueror; nd

he who cancomplywithit, areworthy o beSlaves,havinga Mindpreparedor

it, by the Expirationof all hisAffections or his Country,which ought to be

dearer o him thanhis Life,or anythinghis Lifecanbesuppliedwith.95

The readermight well ask whether Clarendon is writing here about the Jewsor the Royalists, and where in the psalm, moreover,or anywhere else in the

Bible, there is mention of the exiles as those "who escaped the present

Slaughter,and fled," rather than those who were forcibly led away captive.Clarendon'sappropriation of the psalm is bold but not unique, and is

actually entirely in keeping with Charles I's own attempt, using allusions to

the psalms, to recast himself as the sufferingand penitent King David in the

EikonBasilike,attackedso vehemently by Milton. Some yearsafter the Res-

toration, Edward

Pelling,

the

chaplain

to the Duke of Somerset,gave

a

sermon on the anniversaryof Charles I's "martyrdom" January30), takingas his text Ps. 137:1, in which he goes even furtherthan Clarendon in read-

ing the psalm as a comment on contemporary events:

The Story,s of Them:heApplicationf it, is for Us;and at theveryfirstview

we may easilyaccommodate hissadTextto thissadderDay.For,do but Datethe Captivity, StyloNovo: instead of By the RiversofBabylon, read, In a Land of

Confusion,(a Babel in our own Countrey:) Shift you [sic] Pious Thoughts from

the MonarchofJerusalem,o the Memoryof our Own Soveraign, Greater,

Better thanZedekiah, the Mirrourof Princes,the Noblest of Martyrs, heWonderofAges,and the Honourof Men:)...RememberhosemanifoldMiser-

ies that werethroughout,ome, thePraeface;thers,theEpilogueo the dismal

Tragoedy f this Day;and then tell me, WherinOur Captivitydiffer'd romthat in the text, unless it did in This, that 'twasmore Infamous and Reproach-

94Ibid.italicsriginal).95Ibid., 46.

250




ful,becauseat

Home;and'twasnot

(Godbe

Blessed)or

Seventyyears;twas

not so Lastingas OurSins; he Deliverance ut of it wastoo QuickandHastyfor the Repentence f those Miscreantswho madeus Captives.96

This application of the exile in Psalm 137 to the exile of Englishmen "at

Home" requiresa considerableinterpretive eap, and it shows once again the

flexibilityof the idea of"exile" that has been demonstratedby its interpreterssince the first-centuryrabbisread, in the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem,its conquest in their own time by the Romans, and since Augustine ex-

plained the psalm as a lament for the "exile" of all human souls fromheaven.97

KILLING CHILDREN

"Blessedhalhe be that taketh&dasheththychildrenagainst hestones.98

Many readersof Psalm 137 are uncomfortable with the fact that it is a curse

as well as a lament, an expression of what C.S. Lewis calls "thespirit of ha-

tred which strikes us in the face ... like the heat from a furnace mouth."99The final call for God to bless those who throw the Babylonian children

against the stones has been an embarrassment o some Christians,but others

have relishedthe promise of vengeance it seems to offer. Translatorshave re-

sponded to this versewith considerableingenuity.100 ome writers retainthe

curse, but avoid the children, as does Edwin Sandys, who substitutes the

more inclusive metonymy "thycursed seed," which then leaves him free to

increase the bloodthirstiness of the final line: "With dasht-out brains the

96Pelling,-3.97On therabbinicalnterpretationee hereferenceoKugel, 994,above, . 26.

98Ps.37:9,Geneva ible1560).

99Lewis,0.

'??Christophermart's765translation,utsideof thechronologicalcopeof this

study,sperhapsheboldest esponse,ewritinghefinalverse o praise s"greatestnd hebest"heman"whoparesisenemies rofest,/ ndChristian ildnesswns"Smart,47).A similartrategyfradicaleinterpretationorat eastwishfulhinking)eemso lie behind

BishopArthurLake'sermon

allingorChristiansoset aside heirdifferencesnd ollow

the"compassionateisposition. . which ppearedn thecaptiveewes,when hey aid, fIforgethee0 Jerusalem,etmyright andforgeter unning,fI doenotrememberhee,etmytongueleaveo theroofe f mymouth,f lprefere otJerusalemeforemychiefestjoy"fromLake'sermon nPs.51:15, nSermons ith ome eligiousnddivinemeditationsLondon,1629], ited nMcColley997,88).Lakeouldnot,ofcourse, ave nown heuses owhichPsalm 37wouldbeput n theCivilWar, uthecouldhardlyavebeenunawarefthedis-tinct ackof any"compassionateisposition"n the finalcurseof thepsalmtself.I amindebtedo DianeKelseyMcColleyor hisreference.




crying stones to feed."'l?Bacon inserts the children into verse 7 ("Remem-ber thou, O Lord, the cruel cry/ Of Edom'schildren"),which lays the blame

on their heads and turns them from literal children into all the "offspring"of

Edom and Babylon, adults and children alike.102Other translatorssimplywallow in the gore. Fletcher,Davison, and Carewvie for the grisliestversion,but Oldham, elsewhere a masterof satiric invective, surpassesthem all:

Blest,yeathrice-blessed e that barbarousHand

(Oh Grief! hatI suchdireRevenge ommend)Who tearsout Infants romtheirmother'sWomb,

Andhurls emyet unbornuntotheirTomb.Blesthe, who plucks emfromtheirParents'Arms,ThatSanctuaryromallcommonHarms;

Who with theirSkullsand BonesshallpavethyStreetsall o'erAndfillthygluttedChannelswith theirscatter'd rains& Gore.'03

Oldham'sparentheticalgrief at having to utter such a curse hardlymitigateshis obvious relish in the charnelhouse details of his paraphrase. Donald

Davie, who calls Oldham'sparaphrase"themost horrible of psalm-versions

into English,"also criticizesWither for indulging in an unchristian relish forthe psalm's inalverse (which in his firstversion blesseshim that "brainesthybabes in stony places").'04This is not quite fair, however, since in the prose

prayer printed between his two translations of the psalm, Wither allegorizesthe Edomites/Babylonians into "spiritualdestroyers,"which implies that the

vengeance called for might be similarly "spiritual,"and what the blessed

man "brains" urn out to be not Babylonian infants at all, but "sin, & here-

sies in their first birth." There is a long tradition of such allegorical escapesfrom this verse.

Augustine,for instance, in answer to his own rhetorical

question, "Whatare the little ones of Babylon?"answers"Evildesires at their

birth."105 alvin allows himself and his readersno such easyescape, insistingon a literalreading:

And although t seeme a cruellthing,when heewysheththeyrtenderBabes,whiche asyet coulde doo no harme, oo bee dashedandbraynedagaynst hestones:yet notwithstandingorasmuche s he speakethnot of his own head,but fetchethhiswordsat Godsmouth,it is nothingelse but a proclayming fGodsjustejudgement:ike as alsowhen the Lordeavoucheth, hat ookewhat

measure cheman hath usedtowardothers, he sameshalbemeasuredagaineunto himselfe. Math, 7.2.106

'0?E.andys,25.'02Bacon,85.

1031ldham, 143.

'04Davie, 167, 112.

'05Augustine, 1857, 176.

'0"Calvin,fol. 227.

252




Thepunishment

of those "whiche asyet

coulde doo no harme"may

have

held particular interest for Calvin, so much concerned with election and

predestination. It may also be that Calvin's harsh readingof Ps. 137: 9, like

his theology of life on earth as perpetual warfare, derived in part from his

own experience of political and religious strife in mid-sixteenth-centuryFrance.107 he French Civil Wars,as the English, may have inured their par-

ticipants and victims to a level of violence otherwise unacceptable to

Christian readersof the psalms.This verse calling for vengeance was also invoked during the English

Civil War, by Stephen Marshall in his "fast sermon" to Parliament, Meroz

Cursed.It takes as its text Judges 5:23, "Curseye Meroz (said the Angell of

the Lord) curseye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to

the helpe of the Lord, to the helpe of the Lordagainst the mighty" (Geneva

Bible). Not surprisingly in a sermon about cursing, Marshall comes to dis-

cuss Ps. 137:9. He admits that it seems harsh but affirms its justice in the

context (and, by implication, in his own context, England in the 1640s):

What Souldiers eartwould not startatthis,not onlywhen he is in hotblood ocut downearmed nemies n thefield,but afterwarddeliberatelyo come into asubduedCity, nd takethe littleonesuponthespearespoint,o takethembytheheelesand beatout their brainesagainst hewalles,whatinhumanitieandbar-barousnesse ouldthis bethought?Yet f this workbe to revengeGods Church

againstBabylon, e is a blessedmanthattakes nddasheshe ittleonesagainsthestones.08

In this sermon, whose subject is essentially "if you're not for us, you're

against us," there is no allegorization. The vengeance called for is most lit-

eral, and this is, after all, in keeping with the spirit of the psalm. It is aninteresting case of the broad influence of the Psalms that both sides in the

Civil War turned to the same psalm for solace or support. Any condition of

alienation or estrangement could be interpreted as exile, and "Babylon,"as

noted above, could be applied to any convenient enemy and oppressor. In

his ScriptureVindicated,attacking Marshall'sMeroz Cursed,Edward Sym-mons wrote with some exasperation, "Under the notion of Babylon [are

comprehended] the King and his children, the nobility and the gentry, the

ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and Christians of all sorts."109The explanation for the popularityof Psalm 137 in the Renaissancemay

lie in its ease of application to severalwidespreadcontemporary conditions.

'70n Calvin'sotionof"perpetualarfare,"eeBouwsma,82-88.

'O?Marshall,1-12.

'09CitednHill,112.Iam ndebtedoHill's iscussionf therange finterpretationfbiblical Babylon"yEnglishmenf allsorts.




As theexamples

cited abovesuggest,

Renaissance translatorsandparaphras-ers of Psalm 137, whether poets, scholars, or both, found in this psalm a

source of consolation for a varietyof situations of exile, alienation, loss, and

estrangement, according to the religious and political views or the personalcircumstances of the interpreters. Furthermore, the psalm particularly ap-

pealed to writers, since it representedthe condition of exile in terms of loss

of voice and skill, the inability to sing.The psalm'semphasis on the fragilityof memory and the dangers of forgetting one's cultural and religious roots

also touched a nerve connecting to a central anxiety of both Renaissance

Humanists and Protestant Reformers. Finally, the last verses of the psalm,

sanctioning and offering a model for vengeful cursing, proved especially at-

tractive during these centuries of violent religious conflict. Donne told his

congregation at St. Paul's n 1626 that "The Psalmes are the Manna of the

Church. As Manna tasted to every man like that that he liked best, so doe

the Psalmes minister instruction, and satisfaction, to every man, in every

emergency and occasion."110The evidence shows that Psalm 137 satisfied

the appetites of all who hungered for it.

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, MANSFIELD

"lDonne, 91.

254




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Documents

Psalm Translation