The Ninetieth Psalm

O Lord, thou art our home, to whom we fly,

   And so hast always been from age to age:

Before the hills did intercept the eye,

   Or that the frame was up to earthly stage,

          One God thou were, and art, and still shall be;

          The line of time, it doth not measure thee.

Both death and life obey thy holy lore,

   And visit in their turns, as they are sent:

I thousand years with the they are no more

   Then yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent:

           Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep,

          And goes, and comes, unaware as to them that sleep.

Thou carriest man away as with a tide:

   Then down swim all his thoughts that mounted high;

Much like a mocking dream, that will not bide,

   But flies before the sight of waking eye;

          Or ask the grass, that cannot term obtain

          To see the summer come about again.

At morning, fair it musters on the ground;

   At even, it is cut down and laid along:

And so it spared were and favor found,

   The weather would perform the mower’s wrong:

           Thus hast thou hanged our life on brittle pins,

          To let us know it will not bear our sins.

Thou buriest not within oblivion’s tomb

   Our trespasses, but enterest them aright;

Even those that are conceived in darkness’ womb,

   To thee appear as done at broad daylight.

          As a tale told, which sometimes men attend,

          And sometimes not, our life steals to an end.

The life of man is threescore years and ten,

   Or, that if he be strong, perhaps fourscore;

Yet all things are bit labor to him then,

   New sorrows still come on, pleasures no more.

          Why should there be such turmoil and such strife,

          To spin in length this feeble line of life?

But who considers duly of thine ire?

   Or doth the thoughts thereof wisely embrace?

For thou, O God, art a consuming fire:

   Frail man, how can he stand before thy face?

          If thy displeasure thou dost not refrain,

          A moment brings all back to dust again.

Teach us, O Lord, to number well our days,

   Thereby our hearts to wisdom to apply;

For that which guides man best in all his ways,

   In meditation of mortality.

          This bubble light, this vapor of our breath,

          Teach us to consecrate to hour of death.

Return unto us, Lord, and balance now

   With the days of joy our days of misery;

Help us right soon, our knees to thee we bow,

   Depending wholly on thy clemency;

         Then shall thy servants both with heart and voice,

         All the days of their life in thee rejoice.

Begin by work, O Lord, in this our age,

   Show it unto thy  servants that now live;

But to our children raise it many a stage,

   That all the world to thee may glory give.

          Our handiwork likewise, as fruitful tree,

          Let it, O Lord, blessed, not blasted be.

--Francis Bacon (1561-1626), from The Poets’ Book of Psalms (edited by Laurance Wieder)