Our Pilgrim Fathers accepted these absurd, tautological verses gladly, and sang them gratefully; but we know the spirit of poesy could never have existed in them, else they would have fought hard against abandoning such majestic psalms as Sternhold's--
"The Lord descended from above
and bow'd the heavens hye
And underneath his feete he cast
the darkness of the skye.
"On cherubs and on cherubines
full royally he road
And on the winges of all the windes
came flying all abroad."
They gave up these lines of simple grandeur, to which they were accustomed, for such wretched verses as these of the New England version:--
9. Likewise the heavens he downe-bow'd and he descended, & there was under his feet a gloomy cloud
10. And he on cherub rode and flew; yea, he flew on the wings of winde.
11. His secret place hee darkness made his covert that him round confide.
I cannot understand why they did not sing the psalms of David just as they were printed in the English Bible; it would certainly be quite as practicable as to sing this latter selection.
President Dunster's improving hand and brain evolved this rendition:--
"Likewise the heavens he down-bow'd
and he descended: also there
Was at his feet a gloomy cloud
and he on cherubs rode apace.
Yea on the wings of wind he flew
he darkness made his secret place
His covert round about him drew."
Though the grotesque wording and droll errors of these old psalm-books can, after the lapse of centuries, be pointed out and must be smiled at, there is after all something so pathetic in the thought of those good, scholarly old New England saints, hampered by poverty, in dread of attack of Indians, burdened with hard work, harassed by "eighty-two pestilent heresies," still laboring faithfully and diligently in their strange new home at their unsuited work,--something so pathetic, so grand, so truly Christian, that when I point out any of the absurdities or failures in their work, I dread lest the shades of Cotton, of Sewall, of Mather, of Eliot, brand me as of old, "in capitall letters," as "AN OPEN AND OBSTINATE CONTEMNER OF GOD'S HOLY ORDINANCES," or worse still, with that mysterious, that dread name, "A WANTON GOSPELLER."
The second edition of the "New England Psalm-Book" was published in 1647; the one copy known to exist has sold for four hundred and thirty-five dollars. The third edition was the one revised by President Dunster and Mr. Lyon, and was printed in 1650. In 1691 the unfortunate book was again "pollished" by a committee of ministers, who thus altered the last two stanzas of the Song of Deborah and Barak:--