This Article taken from Appleton's 5th Grade Reader, 1878 (In possession of Havard College Library). Apparently, there is some distinction between education of the 1800's and that of our day - J. Ogles




TRANSLATION OF THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM.


1. The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
And feed me with a shepherd’s care ;

His presence shall my wants supply,

And guard me with a watchful eye ;

My noonday walks He shall attend,

And all my midnight hours defend.


2. When in the sultry glebe I faint,

Or on the thirsty mountain pant,

To fertile vales and dewy meads

My weary, wand’ring steps He leads ;

Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,

Amid the verdant landscape flow.


3. Though in the paths of death I tread,

With gloomy horrors overspread,

My steadfast heart shall feel no ill,

For Thou, O Lord, art with me still!

Thy friendly crook shall give me aid;

And guide me through the dreadful shade.


4, Though in a bare and rugged way,

Through devious, lonely wilds, I stray,

Thy bounty shall my wants beguile ;

The barren wilderness shall smile,

With sudden greens and herbage crowned,

And streams shall murmur all around.



For Preparation.—I. A paraphrase, rather than a “translation,” of

the Twenty-third Psalm. The 1st verse corresponds to the first as numbered in King James’s version of the Bible; the 2d to the second and third; the 3d to the fourth; the 4th to the fifth and sixth. Is the imagery of this psalm suggestive of the city or of the country? What employment and surroundings?

Il. Shép’-herd (-érd), guard (gard), guide (id).

III. Mark off into feet the lines of the 1st stanza, showing the syllables where the accent falls.

IV. Glebe, meads, crook, beguile, sultry, “ sudden greens,” ‘“ the barrenwilderness shall smile.”

V. Compare this translation with King James’s version, and make note of the expression wherein the latter is stronger or more vivid than the former; also wherein the former is more systematic. Contrast the force of expression in “ Though in the paths of death I tread” and “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” What thoughts in either version are not expressed at all in the other? A distinguished preacher says of this psalm: “ 
    David has left no sweeter psalm than the short twenty-third. It is but a moment’s opening of his soul; but, as when one, walking the winter street, sees the door opened for some one to enter, and the red light streams a moment forth, and the forms of gay children are running to greet the comer, and genial music sounds, though the door shuts and leaves night black, yet it cannot shut back again all that the eye, the ear, the heart, and the imagination have seen; so in this psalm, though it is but a moment’s opening of the soul, are emitted truths of peace and consolation that will never be absent from the world. It has charmed more griefs to rest than all the philosophy of the world. 
    It has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows, than there are sands on the sea-shore. It has comforted the noble host of the poor. It has sung courage to the army of the disappointed. It has poured balm and consolation into the hearts of the sick, of captives in dungeons, of widows in their pinching griefs, of orphans in their loneliness.

    Dying soldiers have died easier as it was read to them; ghastly hospitals have been illuminated; it has visited the prisoner and broken his chains, and, like Peter’s angel, led him forth in imagination, and sung him back to his home again.”