Rivers, yea, though rivers roar, Roaring though sea-billows rise; Vex the deep, and break the shore, Stronger art Thou, Lord of skies. Firm and true Thy promise lies Now and still as heretofore: Holy worship never dies In Thy house where we adore. George Sandys (1577-1643) was a true poet. Dryden called him ‘the best versifier of the former age,’ and Richard Baxter said, ‘I must confess after all that, next the Scripture poems, there are none so savoury to me as Mr. George Herbert’s and Mr. George Sandys’s.’ Charles the First comforted himself with Sandys’s psalms during his imprisonment at Carisbrooke. He is even yet little known to our hymn-books, though a few of his psalms make, with a little adaptation, good hymns. The _Methodist Hymn-book_ contains two— Thou who art enthroned above[64] (Ps. xcii.). Ye who dwell above the skies (Ps. cxlviii.). His version of Ps. lxvi. also has some good lines. It begins— Happy sons of Israel, Who in pleasant Canaan dwell: Fill the air with shouts of joy, Shouts redoubled from the sky. Sing the great Jehovah’s praise, Trophies to His glory raise. These quotations must suffice for the psalms of the period between the Old and New Versions. Those who are interested in this not very attractive literature will find specimens of the principal British and American writers in Holland’s _Psalmists of Britain_ (1843), and Glass’s _Story of the Psalters_ (1888). When one looks at the two authorized metrical versions, and the many attempts made to supplant them, it is difficult to understand how the Church could so long have clung to the metrical Psalter, and could be so slow to use a hymn-book. Keble says of his own version—‘It was undertaken, in the first instance, with a serious apprehension, which has since grown into a full conviction, that the thing attempted is, strictly speaking, _impossible_.’ Yet scores have made the same fruitless effort since Keble failed. Apart from the psalm-versions there are few hymns of the sixteenth century. George Gascoigne (d. 1577), a lawyer, poet, and courtier of Elizabeth’s day, and a descendant of Sir William Gascoigne, the judge who committed Henry V, when Prince of Wales, to prison, wrote a poem entitled ‘Good Morrow,’ from which a good hymn has been made, which is in many of the better school hymnals. You that have spent the silent night In sleep and quiet rest, And joy to see the cheerful light That riseth in the East; Now clear your voice, now cheer your heart, Come help me now to sing; Each willing wight come bear a part, To praise the heavenly King. Yet as this deadly night did last But for a little space, And heavenly day, now night is past, Doth show his pleasant face: So must we hope to see God’s face At last in heaven on high, When we have changed this mortal place For Immortality.