Time Past and Lost

Electing Lord, my dwelling place
Thou’st been since ere the earth,
Recording in thy book my days
When yet I had no birth.

A thousand years may flurry past;
‘Tis but thy yesterday,
Short-lived as evening watches last
Or grasses on the lea.

But half my threescore I have run,
Near half again the ten,
My times are gone when just begun
And shall not be again.

Must I in ignominy stand
For all my sins of youth?
If thou wouldst guilty-verdict hand,
I must attest its truth.

No lily have I called mine own
Nor olive shoots begot;
My name is in the world unknown,
And legacy I’ve not.

Thy hand upon me heavy lies
With sorrows and with pains,
My meager life my only prize,
My weary soul complains.

But teach me, Lord, to count my days
And from their dwindling sum
To wisdom gain, that I may praise
Thee in the age to come.

For thee, Jehovah, lifted up,
I fear, e’en as I plead,
Who swearest yet unperished hope
And future guaranteed.

Have mercy on my waning years;
Let me thy goodness see.
For every one I spend in tears,
A joyful let there be.

Unto thy servants show thy ways,
Thy children, all thy pow’rs;
Bestow thy favor on our days
And bless each work of ours.

—3/28/26. Based on Psalm 90. A lament. To “St. Anne,” vaguely.

I. Ps 90:1-2; 139:16
II. Ps 90:4-6
III. Ps 90:10
IV. Ps 90:7-8; 25:7; 51:4
V. Song 2:1-2; Ps 128:3; 90:3
VI. Jer 45:2-5; Ps 90:11
VII. Ps 90:12
VIII. Prov 23:17-18; Ps 90:13
IX. Ps 90:14-15
X. Ps 90:16-17

Nobody gets to write poetry around Psalm 90 without acknowledging the influence of Isaac Watts with “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Especially if they have already committed to common meter (8.6.8.6.), which works beautifully for a lament. The truncated second line carries the theme of lamentation well: something is missing.

I’m not sure what else to say. For once I’ve gotten everything I wanted into the text. I wrestle often with a disappointment that my life is not more than it is by now, and a fear that it never will be. Against this are all the promises of election and salvation. What did Moses mean by calling the Lord our dwelling-place in all generations, immediately afterward referencing his eternity, except the same thing Paul says in Eph 1:4, that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world?

As always, it seems a pity not to at least keep an eye to congregational singing, somehow. For general usage, I would change the third stanza to begin:

But though myself I threescore run
And twenty more, or ten,

And then omit the fifth and maybe fourth stanzas.