The sinner's lips, with curses fraught (Osborne Wight)

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  • (Posted 2011-11-08)  CPDL #24905:        (Sibelius 6)
Editor: Edmund Gooch (submitted 2011-11-08).   Score information: A4, 3 pages, 39 kB   Copyright: Public Domain
Edition notes: The last note is printed as a minim in all parts in the original.

General Information

Title: The sinner's lips, with curses fraught
Composer: Osborne Wight
Lyricist: James Merrick

Number of voices: 3vv   Voicing: SSB
Genre: SacredAnthem

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1794 in Improved Psalmody, p. 34
Description: A setting by Osborne Wight of James Merrick's metrical version of Psalm 10:7-14, compiled by William Dechair Tattersall.

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png English text

The sinner's lips, with curses fraught,
Words ill according to his thought
Have utter'd, and beneath his tongue
Lurk fraud, and violence, and wrong.

Beside the solitary way,
Intent the helpless poor to stay,
He waits, and with malignant eye
Insidious marks each passer by.

As, couch'd within his bushy lair,
The lion fierce with hideous glare
Around him casts his wide survey,
And meditates the future prey,

So longs the man of blood to seize
The souls that own thy just decrees:
When, planted with successful care,
His nets their captive feet insnare,

What, Lord, his fury shall withstand,
Or save them from the murth'rous band,
That, leagu'd in sin, assist his toil,
And share with him the guilty spoil?

"Shall Heav'n's high Lord", he cries, "descend
The human actions to attend?
The paths by me at will pursu'd
His mem'ry and his thought elude."

Rise, mightiest Lord, and lift thy hand,
Nor let the injur'd poor demand
Thy saving aid with fruitless pray'r,
But guard them by thy fost'ring care.

Why should the souls, who thee decry,
With impious tongues reproachful cry,
"'Tis not within th'Almighty's plan
To scrutinize the acts of man?"