Psalms Through the Centuries, Volume 3. Susan Gillingham

Psalms Through the Centuries, Volume 3 - Susan Gillingham


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mainly by reading the ‘dwelling place’ (verse 1) and the ‘house of my God’ (verse 10) as the church. The hymn ‘Jerusalem the Golden!/The glory of the elect!/O dear and future vision/that eager hearts expect…’, written by the twelfth-century Benedictine monk, *Bernard of Cluny, may have been influenced by this psalm, along with Psalms 48 and 87.192 It was traditionally sung in its entirety at *Matins during the Feast of Corpus Christi, and verse 1 is a communion *antiphon in Lenten services in the western churches. ‘Rorate Caeli Desuper’ (‘Drop Down Ye Heavens From Above’), a Plainsong version known also as ‘Advent Prose’, expressing longing for the Messiah (as in Ps. 84:9) combines texts from Isaiah 45 with parts of this psalm; the arrangements for this liturgy by *Byrd and da *Palestrina are perhaps the best known. Byrd also arranged a setting of this psalm in English, in his 1588 Psalms, Sonnets and Songs of Gladness and Pietie.*Schütz also used this psalm in his Psalms of David, to be sung with *SATB and basso seguente.193 Other choral settings to this psalm abound, including *Lyte’s ‘Pleasant are thy courts above’; *Weelkes’, *Parry’s and *Vaughan Williams’ different arrangements of *Coverdale’s ‘O How Amiable are thy Dwellings’ from the *BCP; and *Howells’ ‘One Thing Have I Desired’, all of which capture the spirit of this psalm in English.

      The sparrow builds herself a nest,

       And suffers no remove:

       O make me, like the sparrows, blest

       To dwell but where I love.

      To sit one day beneath thine eye,

       And hear thy gracious voice,

       Exceeds a whole eternity

       Employ’d in carnal joys.

      Lord, at thy threshold I would wait

       While Jesus is within,

       Rather than fill a throne of state,

       Or live in tents of sin.

      Lord for thee I daily crie;

       In thy absence hourely die.

       Sparrowes there their young ones reare;

       And the Summers Harbinger

       By thy Alter builds her nest,

       Where they take their envi’d rest.

       O my King! O thou most High!

       Arbiter of Victorie!

       Happie men! Who spend their Dayes;

       In thy Court, there sing thy Praise!

      Triumphant General of the Sacred Host,

       Whom all the strength of Heav’n and earth obey,

       Who hast a Thundering Legion in each Coast,

       And Mighty Armies lifted, and in pay;

       How fearfull art Thou in their head above,

       Yet in Thy Temple, Lord: how full of Love?

      How lovely are thy dwellings fair!

       O Lord of Hoasts, how dear

       The pleasant Tabernacles are!

       Where thou do’st dwell so near.

      My Soul doth long and almost die

       The Courts O Lord to see;

       My heart and flesh aloud do crie,

       O living God, for thee.

      There ev’n the Sparrow freed from wrong

       Hath found a house of rest,

       The Swallow there, to lay her young

       Hath built her brooding nest…

      To


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