The Sidney Psalter (Psalms of Sir Philip and Mary Sidney)
The Psalmes of David Translated into Divers and Sundry Kindes of Verse
THE Lord, the Lord my shepheard is, / And so can never I / Tast misery.
Our renderingThe Lord is my shepherd—and so I can never know misery. (Mary Sidney Herbert's Psalm 23, opening lines)
What it is
A complete metrical paraphrase of all 150 Psalms in sophisticated English verse, begun by Sir Philip Sidney (Psalms 1–43, completed before his death at Zutphen in 1586) and finished by his sister Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (Psalms 44–150, completed by 1599). Mary employed 128 different verse forms, drawing on the Geneva Bible and commentaries by Calvin and Theodore de Bèze. A presentation copy was prepared for Queen Elizabeth I in 1599 and at least 17 manuscripts survive, one supervised at Penshurst by Mary herself and copied by the poet John Davies of Hereford. John Donne praised it as 'the highest matter in the noblest form' and wrote a dedicatory poem celebrating the siblings as divine instruments; George Herbert's own devotional style shows its direct influence. The psalter was designed for private devotional reading, not congregational singing, and circulated throughout the Sidney–Pembroke court circle at Wilton House.
Why it still matters
The Sidney Psalter offers richly meditative verse for private psalm-based prayer; readers can pray through individual psalms slowly as a form of lectio divina, savoring the theological depth Mary Herbert brings to each unique poetic form.
Kept alongside
The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations
George Herbert's complete collection of English devotional poems, entrusted on his deathbed to Nicholas Ferrar with instructions to publish if they might help 'any dejected poor soul.' Herbert was a kinsman of the 3rd Earl of Pembroke (William Herbert), whose patronage secured him the rectory at Bemerton near Wilton House; he also answered Philip Sidney's secular sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella with early sonnets dedicated entirely to God. The Temple went through at least eleven editions by 1695 and immediately became the central text of English Protestant devotional lyricism. Its structure mirrors the Anglican liturgical year, and individual poems such as 'Love (III),' 'Easter Wings,' and 'The Altar' function as meditations on grace, humility, and the soul's encounter with Christ. Richard Baxter wrote that Herbert 'speaks to God like one that really believeth in God.'
A Discourse of Life and Death
Excellent discours de la vie et de la mort (translated by Mary Sidney Herbert)
Mary Sidney Herbert's English translation of Huguenot theologian Philippe de Mornay's prose meditation on the vanity of earthly life and the blessedness of a Christian death. She signed the translation 'The 13 of May 1590. At Wilton,' making the Pembroke seat the explicit locus of its composition, and published it together with her translation of Garnier's Antonius in 1592. The work reflects the Sidney circle's militant Protestant Calvinism: Mornay argues that 'we find greater civil war within ourselves' and that only trust in Providence reconciles the soul to mortality. Mary used the translation both as personal grief-work after Philip Sidney's death and as a public statement of Protestant literary patronage, establishing herself as heir to her brother's theological and literary politics.
John Donne's Sermon on Magdalen Herbert (with George Herbert's Memoriae Matris Sacrum)
A Sermon of Commemoration of the Lady Danvers
John Donne's funeral sermon for Magdalen Herbert (Lady Danvers), mother of George Herbert, published in 1627 with George Herbert's nineteen Latin and Greek memorial poems appended. Donne had been Magdalen's friend and protégé for twenty years, and the sermon describes her household prayer practice and her formation of her ten children in Anglican piety—including the young George—as a model of Protestant domesticity. George Herbert's decision to publish his memorial verse attached to Donne's sermon (his only act of publication in his lifetime) demonstrates how the Herbert family's devotional life was inseparable from its literary identity. The combined volume is a document of the devotional culture at the intersection of the Pembroke and Herbert–Newport family circles.