Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me:
For blessed are they that keep my ways.
Hear instruction, and be wise,
And refuse it not.
Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
For whoso findeth me findeth life,
And shall obtain favour of the LORD;
But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul;
All they that hate me love death.

LYRICS

I

AN ELEGY OF A BROKEN HEART

1

Let the day perish wherein I was born;
And the night which said, There is a man child conceived!

Let that day be darkness;
Let not God regard it from above,
Neither let the light shine upon it!
Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own;
Let a cloud dwell upon it;
Let all that maketh black the day terrify it!

As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it;
Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;
Let it not come into the number of the months!
Lo, let that night be barren;
Let no joyful voice come therein!
Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are ready to rouse up leviathan!
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark!
Let it look for light, but have none;
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:

Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb,
Nor hid trouble from mine eyes!

2

Why died I not from the womb?
Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should suck?

For now should I have lien down and been quiet;
I should have slept; then had I been at rest,
With kings and counsellors of the earth,
Which built solitary piles for themselves;
Or with princes that had gold,
Who filled their houses with silver;
Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been;
As infants which never saw light.
There the wicked cease from troubling;
And there the weary be at rest.
There the prisoners are at ease together;
They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
The small and great are there;
And the servant is free from his master.
Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,
And life unto the bitter in soul?
Which long for death, but it cometh not;
And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
Which rejoice exceedingly,
And are glad when they can find the grave.
Why