| |
| BY Euphrates’ flowry side | |
| We did bide, | |
| From deare Juda faire absented, | |
| Tearing the aire with our cryes; | |
| And our eyes | 5 |
| With their streames his streame augmented. | |
| |
| When, poore Syon’s dolefull state, | |
| Desolate; | |
| Sacked, burned, and inthrall’d, | |
| And the temple spoil’d, which wee | 10 |
| Ne’er should see, | |
| To our mirthlesse mindes wee call’d: | |
| |
| Our mute harpes, untun’d, unstrung, | |
| Up wee hung | |
| On greene willowes neere beside us, | 15 |
| Where we, sitting all forlorne, | |
| Thus in scorne | |
| Our proud spoylers ’gan deride us: | |
| |
| Come, sad captives, leave your moanes, | |
| And your groanes | 20 |
| Under Syon’s ruines bury; | |
| Tune your harps, and sing us layes | |
| In the praise | |
| Of your God, and let’s be merry. | |
| |
| Can, ah! can we leave our moanes, | 25 |
| And our groanes | |
| Under Syon’s ruines bury? | |
| Can we in this land sing layes | |
| In the praise | |
| Of our God, and here be merry? | 30 |
| |
| No; deare Syon, if I yet | |
| Do forget | |
| Thine affliction miserable, | |
| Let my nimble joynts become | |
| Stiffe and numme, | 35 |
| To touch warbling harpe unable. | |
| |
| Let my tongue lose singing skill, | |
| Let it still | |
| To my parched roofe be glewed, | |
| If in either harpe or voice | 40 |
| I rejoice | |
| Till thy joyes shall be renewed. | |
| |
| Lord, curse Edom’s traiterous kinde; | |
| Beare in minde | |
| In our ruines how they revell’d: | 45 |
| Sack, kill, burne! they cryed out still, | |
| Sack, burne, kill! | |
| Downe with all, let all be levell’d. | |
| |
| And thou Babel, when the tide | |
| Of thy pride, | 50 |
| Now a flowing, growe to turning; | |
| Victor now, shall then be thrall, | |
| And shall fall | |
| To as low an ebbe of mourning. | |
| |
| Happy he who shall thee waste, | 55 |
| As thou hast | |
| Us, without all mercy, wasted, | |
| And shall make thee taste and see | |
| What poore wee | |
| By thy meanes have seene and tasted. | 60 |
| |
| Happy who thy tender barnes, | |
| From the armes | |
| Of their wailing mothers tearing, | |
| ’Gainst the walls shall dash their bones, | |
| Ruthlesse stones | 65 |
| With their braines and blood besmearing. | |
| |
