work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context 5225,"","Searching ""brain"" and ""stamp"" in HDIS (Poetry)",2005-04-11 00:00:00 UTC,"Thou God with vengeance arm'd, appear;
Thou God with vengeance arm'd, whose fear
The Earth (for Thee her Judge she knows,)
Submissive owns, thy pow'r disclose,
And instant from thy seat arise,
Each proud transgressor to chastise.
How long shall impious Crouds, how long,
With haughtiest insult arm their tongue?
How long in bitt'rest gall each word
Infuse, and boast their conqu'ring sword?
Thy Flock, great God, their fury own;
Beneath their stroke thy People groan:
Their hands, remorseless, to the tomb
The Widow and the Stranger doom;
Nor innocence nor tend'rest age
Can shield the Orphan from their rage.
""Ne'er shall our deeds in Heav'n be known,
""Or reach (they cry,) the distant Throne
""Of Israel's Lord.""--Ye fools and blind!
Return, and seek a better mind.
Say, when shall Wisdom's light serene
Your souls from error's childhood wean?
Who knew to plant the ear, shall He
Not hear? Who form'd the eye, not see?
Shall aught of guilt his search evade,
Who bids the Nations he has made,
Inform'd by his paternal care,
The gifts of various Science share,
Who Reason in the bosom pours,
Its growth improves, its fruit matures,
Each counsel of the human brain
Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?
",,14056,"•Psalm XCIV
•DNB notes Psalms is a popular work. ""Merrick was evidently aiming to capture a different audience from the nonconformists who were singing Isaac Watts's The Psalms of David of 1719: he seems to have been attempting a version which would be an alternative to Watts for the Church of England, and which would also 'answer the purposes of private devotion' (preface). He used a number of metres; the majority were couplets in octosyllabics or of seven syllables. The popularity of the book is shown by its frequent reprinting, and by an edition 'divided into stanzas and adapted for devotion' by W. D. Tattersall (1794). Before that, twenty-one of Merrick's psalms had appeared in J. Ash and C. Evans's A Collection of Hymns Adapted to Public Worship (1781), over the signature 'M'; they were set to music by William Hayes (1775) for use in Magdalen College chapel, Oxford. Further editions with musical settings followed, including settings by Haydn. According to Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, Merrick's psalm versions were popular in the early nineteenth century, but had by 1892 'fallen very much into disuse' (p. 725, col. 2). It is not difficult to see why: although they were commended by Robert Lowth (who of course had a hand in them, and who described Merrick as 'one of the best of men, and most eminent of scholars'), they were described by a contemporary critic as tame and diffuse, and James Montgomery has some sharp comments on their verbosity. They are now forgotten. They were greatly admired, however, in Merrick's own time: Thomas Warton said that they evidenced 'a flow of poetical language, and a richness of imagery, which give dignity to the subject, without departing from the sense of the inspired writer' (Coates, 439).""","""Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?""",Impression,2013-11-11 04:40:28 UTC,I've included the entire poem