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VII
THE RHYMES IN FRANCIS BACON'S PSALMS
As long as Life doth last,
I Hymns will sing.
FRANCIS BACON'S " Translation of
the 1
04th Psalm."
As we intend to speak of such of Bacon's rhymed
verses as are signed with his name, we must, of course,
begin with the poetry which he published in undis
guised verse- form, with the " Psalms."
In December 1624, with the year 1625 printed on
its title-page, i.e., a year and a quarter before his death,
Francis Bacon published " The Translation of Certain
Psalms, into English Verse," and set his full name to
the book. It is the only book of poems that bears his
name, and contains no more than seven psalms con
sisting in all of only three hundred and twenty verses.
The psalms selected by Bacon are Nos. i, 12, 90, 104,
126, 137 and 149. The shortest (No. 126) consists of
twenty, the longest (No. 104) of one hundred and
twenty lines written in verse form. All the verses
(with one single exception, as we shall see) are rhymed.
One of the psalms is in four-lined, two are in eight-lined
stanzas. Three of the psalms are written in the same
form as the Shakespeare epic "Venus and Adonis," pub
lished in the year 1593, i.e., in six-lined stanzas. One
psalm rhymes from line to line and is written in heroic
verse (like certain passages in the Shakespeare Plays).