The poem might have closed there, perhaps a stronger writer would have suppressed the thin stanza. But while it detracts from the virility of the verses, it adds measurably to their tenderness.
Lord of earth and heaven! my breast
Seeks in Thee its only rest;
I was lost, Thy accents mild
Homeward lur’d Thy wandering child;
I was blind; Thy healing ray
Charm’d the long eclipse away;
Source of every joy I know,
Solace of my every woe,
O if once Thy smile divine
Ceas’d upon my soul to shine,
What were earth or heaven to me?
What have I in each but Thee?
Almost as good in idea, though not so perfect in form, is Grant’s set of verses on Psalm 94. 12: “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest.”
Enchanted with all that was dazzling and fair,
I followed the rainbow—I caught at the toy;
And still in displeasure Thy goodness was there,
Disappointing the hope, and defeating the joy.
The divine goodness is seen in man’s disappointments, when the fulfilment of hope would have been loss, not gain.
On the whole, however, Grant is less successful when writing to a text than when paraphrasing a context. His renderings of certain Psalms are among the best attempts of the kind. This praise applies to his version of Psalm 49; less unreservedly to his adaptation of Psalm 2. In rendering Psalm 71, Grant gave sentiment too loose a rein. Addison had translated the opening verses of Psalm 19, beginning “The spacious firmament on high.” Grant composed what he called “a sequel or counterpart” to Addison’s hymn, corresponding to the latter portion of Psalm 19 as Addison’s fragment corresponds to the earlier portion. Grant’s supplement ends thus:
Almighty Lord! the sun shall fail,
The moon forget her nightly tale,
And deepest silence hush on high
The radiant chorus of the sky;
But, fixed for everlasting years,
Unmoved amid the wreck of spheres,
Thy word shall shine in cloudless day,
When heaven and earth have passed away.
This is fine, but Grant here hardly bears comparison with Addison: it is the fate of sequels to prove inferior to their forerunners. There is nothing in Grant’s version to equal Addison’s close, where the sun, moon, and stars are
Forever singing as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”
On the other hand, Grant falls very little below Milton in his imitation of part of Psalm 84. I must find room to quote it in full.