Why standest thou soe farre
O God, our only starre,
In time most fitt for thee
To help who vexed be!
For lo with pride the wicked man
Still plagues the poore the most he can:
O lett proud hym be throughly caught
In craft of his own crafty thought.
For he him self doth praise
When he his lust doth ease:
Extolling rav’nous gaine,
But doth God’s self disdaine.
Nay so proud is his puffed thought,
That after God he never sought:
But rather much he fancies this;
The name of God a fable is.
For while his waies doe prove,
On them he setts his love:
Thy judgments are to hie,
He can them not espy.
Therefore he doth defy all those;
That dare them selves to him oppose:
And saieth in his bragging hart,
This gotten blisse, shall never part.
Nor he removed be,
Nor danger ever see:
Yet from his mouth doth spring
Cursing, and cosening
Under his tongue do harbour’d ly
Both mischief and iniquity.
For proof, ofte laine in wait he is
In secrete by-way villages.
In such a place unknown
To slay the hurtlesse one;
With wincking eies ay bent
Against the innocent.
Like lurking Lion in his den,
He waites to spoile the simple men:
Whom to their losse he still doth gett,
When once he draw’th his wily nett.
O with how simple look,
He ofte laieth out his hooke!
And with how humble showes
To trapp poore soules he goes!
Thus freely saieth he in his sprite:
God sleepes, or hath forgotten quite,
His farr-of sight now hud-winck is,
He leisure wants to mark all this.
Then rise and come abroad,
O Lord, our only God:
Lift up thy heav’nly hand
And by the silly stand.
Why should the evill, so evill despise
The pow’r of thy through-seeing eyes?
And why should he in hart soe hard
Say, thou dost not thine own regard?
But nak’d before thin eyes
All wrong and mischief lies:
For of them in thy handes
The ballance ev’nly standes.
But who aright poore-minded be
Committ their cause, them selves to thee,
The succour of the succourles
The father of the fatherles.
Breake thou the wicked arme,
Whose fury bendes to harme:
Search them, and wicked he
Will straight way nothing be.
O Lord we shall thy title sing,
Ever and ever, to be king
Who hast the heath’ny folk destroi’d
From out thy land by them anoi’d.
Thou op’nest heav’nly dore
To praiers of the poore:
Thou first prepar’d their mind,
Then eare to them enclind.
O be thou still the Orphans aid,
That poore from ruyne may be staid:
Least we should ever feare the lust
Of earthly man, a lord of dust.