Psalm 40—Hope the Remembrance of the Future
"He gave me a new song and I couldn’t help but sing it."
Note from Andy
These poems and Psalm renditions continue to appear at their own stately pace. Here is another poem in the series of poems written in dialogue with George Herbert’s poem Prayer (1) paired with a rendition of Psalm 40.
I’ve noticed something about the “Notes from Andy” section of these posts. I usually try to say something about where I think the project is going next by way of a “teaser” but something else almost always happens.
The villanelle I was writing about the conversion of Paul became four sonnets. The poem about Psalm 18 (the volcano one) that I said was coming up next is nowhere near done. When I started this project, I thought every post would include lengthy commentary on the psalm, but that eventually spun off into Pattern Bible.
I suppose the moral of the story is that “it isn’t a poem until you discover something.” We have our ideas about the course a poem will take—let alone a 10-year long, 150-poem Psalm project—and then you get inside the work and the plan changes.
And it is ok because discovery is where the art happens.
Catch Up On Previous Posts
You can catch up with previous Psalms here: 1, 2, 8, 13, 14, 16, 19, 22, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 42, 46, 51, 53, 73, 74, 84, 86, 88, 90, 107, 121, 123, 130, 131, 137, 142, 147, and the Guided Tour.
Sign Up for a Print Copy of the Darkling Psalter
I’m collecting signups to “pledge” for a print copy of the Darkling Psalter when it is available. Just drop your email into this form and it’ll help me pitch the manuscript to publishers.
Without further ado, here is Psalm 40.
Rendition of Psalm 40
I made the Lord my only hope
And he bent himself down to me and heard my cry for help.
He held me and brought me up with him
Away from the precipice, the brink,
The roar around me, the mire I’d made.
He settled me, he steadied me, he held me firm.
He set me on the rock.
He gave me a new song and I couldn’t help but sing it.
Everyone who sees me will fear the Lord
And trust in him.
Happy are those who build their trust on the Lord,
Who do not resort to the artifice of pride and lies.
You have done wonder after wonder for us
And your thoughts toward us are uncountable.
Nothing can break the pattern of your purposes.
If I tried to recount your wonders
There would be no end of the telling.
It isn’t sacrifices and offerings that have delighted you,
But my whole life bears the marks of my allegiance.
You haven’t asked for the sacrifices the law requires.
But look! I am here before you.
I want to delight in all the things you love.
Write your ways on my deepest heart.
I have borne the word of your gospel.
I have not kept silent.
I have not hidden your goodness away,
Nor concealed your kindness and truth.
Your faithfulness rises out of me like a fountain.
Your compassion is unrestrained.
You withhold none of it.
Your mercy and truth stand watch over me
Even when numberless threats surround me,
And my own guilt overtakes me
So that I’m blind to anything else.
The times my strength has failed me,
And my convictions have forsaken me
Are more numerous than the hairs on my head.
Nevertheless, Lord, you accept me.
You snatch me from danger. You rush to help me.
May the things that seek my life
Be turned back and humiliated.
May those whose delight is in evil
Be overthrown and disappointed.
But may everyone who follows after your ways
Know peace and gladness and rest.
May those who have cast themselves on your love
Also know your deliverance.
As for me, I am poor in spirit and needy.
Do not forget me. Do not delay.
For you are my rescue and there is no other.
Notes on the Rendition
This psalm seemed like a good one to pair with a poem about hope.
The psalmist seems to have been just rescued from something and is hoping to be rescued again.
“He held me and brought me up with him
Away from the precipice, the brink,
The roar around me, the mire I’d made.
He settled me, he steadied me, he held me firm.
My feet stood on his rock.”
Like so many of the psalms, this one is full of seeming paradoxes (like the human experience itself). The psalmist declares himself righteous and faithful while at the same time asking God to give him the very faith of which his devotion is made. He is in danger but is still safe. He asks for protection and deliverance while singing of the times he brushed with disaster and was narrowly snatched from the brink. He feels that the Lord’s good purposes toward him are measured out to him in an unbreakable pattern but also feels so overwhelmed that he can barely stand. He remembers the Lord’s wonders and asks not to be forgotten.
The psalm looks forward and backward in both peace and trepidation, like hope itself, the remembrance of the future.
Notes on the Poem
This is the fourth poem I’ve written in the shadow of Herbert’s Prayer (1) and I’m amazed at the way the exercise forces me to see a little bit more deeply into Herbert’s poem each time. It is truly a marvelous poem.
I can feel these poems wanting to grow into a series of seven poems, three light, three dark, and (chiastically) the one about grace in the middle. We’ll see what actually happens (see note above).
The one about faith was posted last week. The one about love is next.
Poem for Psalm 40—Hope the Remembrance of the Future
Hope the remembrance of the future, fleeting manna,
No more than hand can hold or heart gather,
The black and bird-boned limbs of winter, the lives of stars,
A thousand years then the firekiss,
Men like trees walking, snowdrops writhing underfoot,
The martins circling year and again, angels and flames of fire,
Celestial bodies humming to themselves,
A soft peach bruised as if the world were young,
Haunted and hallowed, branded, bent, and fallow,
Memory of lupine, the hint half-guessed,
God incarnate, the gladness of the blessed,
Sweet singer and holy fool, trading a name for a single jewel,
The sky itself gripped and rended,
Empty hands until the benediction is ended.
A beautiful poem to match Herbert’s poem, not just in the echo of hope but in the echo of song.
Not sure it’s a title, but I am drawn to this one line again and again: ‘no more than hand can hold.’ I am so struck by the idea of God as ‘the God of just enough’. For someone with relative security and safety and abundance in the west (acknowledging my own struggles within that), the idea of ‘daily’ bread is so often lost on me. Perhaps I am heavily influenced by Bema, but as I go further into my own faith journey, I find ‘daily bread’ as challenging as it is comforting.
‘No more than hand can hold’ is very evocative and I’ll keep chewing it over as I go about my day.
Thank you for sharing your gifts!
also good job actually following up on something lol