Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
Saviour of mankind, Man, Emmanuel:
Who sin-Iesse died for sinne, who vanquisht hell.
The first fruites of the grave. Whose life did give
Light to our darkness : in whose death we live.
o strengthen thou my faith .... 50
Sandys' A Paraphrase upon the Psalmes of David (London, 1636 ) and A
Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems (London, 1638 ) as well as his Christs
Passion, Englished from the Latin of Grotius (London, 1640 ) are all
translations from an ancient language, Latin, but not really part of the
classical tradition which Sandys represents elsewhere. They are all para·
phrases, free translations into lyric or dramatic poetry strongly devout and
at the same time, as in his belated publication of A Paraphrase upon
the Song of Solomon (London, 164 1), are expressed in quite sensuous
imagery.
Sandys' presumed envoi, printed at the end of his Paraphrases in all editions
from 1636, is his "Deo Opt. Max.," 51 his last formal praise of the
Creator who has brought him to a quiet fireside at home after years of
strange and strenuous experiences in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.
It contains many lines on the Virginia voyage and experience in the colony.
He begins "0 thou who All things of Nothing made, / Whose Hand the
radiant Firmament displa'd," and after several score lines of laudation,
My gratefull Verse thy Goodness shall display,
o thou who went'st along in all my way:
To where the Morning with perfum'd wings
From the high Mountains of Panch rea springs,
To that New-found-out World, where sober Night
Takes from the Antipodes her silent flight:
Thou sav'dst me from the bloudy Massacres
Of faith-less Indians; from their treacherous Wars;
From raging Feavers, from the sultry breath
Of tainted Aire; which cloy'd the jawes of Death.
Preserv'd from swelling Seas; when towring Waves
Mixt with the Clouds, and opened their deepe Graves.
From barbarous Pirats rensom'd . ...
Then brought'st me Home in safety, that this Earth
Might bury me, which fed me from my Birth:
Blest with a heath full age; a quiet Mind,
Content with little . . ..
Though there were dozens, perhaps scores, of printed paraphrases of
various lyric or especially poetic portions of the Scriptures during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, certainly Sandys', beginning with the first
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