Proud Babylon, thou Saw'st us weep
Title:
Psalm the 137th Paraphras'd to the 7th Verse Primary Texts:
MS's: MS F-H 283, 66-8 (follows "On the Lord Dundee," originally written as a continuation of the above elegy on the lost leader, this, on the exiles); Folger, 197 (opens series of devotional poems). Secondary Eds:
1713 Misc, 282-3 (follows "So here confin'd, and but to female clay," and precedes "The Battle between the Rats and the Weazles," a fable on war between the puritans and cavaliers); rpt of 1713: 1903 Reynolds, 214 (she follows Folger and makes this the first in her series of religious poems). 17C:
1696 Tate, 91-2 (in a series of apparently devotional poems). Comment:
The second phase of the above commemoration; she paraphrases the psalm Protestant reformers had used to express their own sense of betrayal and exile; she prays to lose her music and art if ever she should forget the ouster of the true people; the original pairing of this paraphrase and the above elegy is one ofthe more striking demonstrations that following the texts and ordering in F-H 283 leads to a better understanding and appreciation of Finch's poetry; the Folger ordering represents Finch's second carefully censured presentation of this poem. Misplaced it becomes a sheerly religious; it was meant to as a Jacobite statement. Date:
Terminus ad quem: 1696 Tate.
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