Poem by Christopher Smart

Psalm 58

Ye congregation of the tribes,
    On justice do you set your mind;
And are ye free from guile and bribes
   Ye judges of mankind?

Nay, ye of frail and mortal mould
   Imagine mischief in your heart;
Your suffrages and selves are sold
   Unto the general mart.

Men of unrighteous seed betray
   Perverseness from their mother’s womb;
As soon as they can run astray,
   Against the truth presume.

They are with foul infection stained,
   Ev’n with the serpent’s taint impure;
Their ears to blest persuasion chained,
   And locked against her lure.

Though Christ himself the pipe should tune,
   They will not to the measure tread,
Nor will they with his grief commune
   Though tears of blood he shed.

Lord, humanize their scoff and scorn,
   And their malevolence defeat;
Of water and the spirit born
   Let grace their change complete.

Let them with pious ardor burn,
   And make thy holy church their choice;
To thee with all their passions turn,
   And in thy light rejoice.

As quick as lightning to its mark,
   So let thy gracious angel speed;
And take their spirits in thine ark
   To their eternal mead.

The righteous shall exult the more
   As he such powerful mercy sees,
Such wrecks and ruins safe on shore,
   Such tortured souls at ease.

So that a man shall say, no doubt,
   The penitent has his reward;
There is a God to bear him out,
   And he is Christ our Lord.

1. Psalm 114
2. Epistle to Mrs. Tyler
3. The Sweets Of Evening
4. On My Wife's Birth-Day
5. The Long-Nosed Fair

Mary Sidney Psalm 58 ("AND call ye this to utter what is just")

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