The Lamentations of Jeremy, for the Most Part According to Tremellius, Chapter V

1. Remember, O Lord, what is fall’n on us; See, and mark how we are reproached thus; 2. For unto strangers our possession Is turn’d, our houses unto aliens gone.

3. Our mothers are become as widows; we As orphans all, and without fathers be, 4. Waters which are our own, we drink and pay; And upon our own wood a price they lay.

5. Our persecutors on our necks do sit; They make us travail, and not intermit; 6. We stretch our hands unto th’ Egyptians To get us bread; and to th’ Assyrians.

7. Our fathers did these sins, and are no more; But we do bear the sins they did before. 8. They are but servants, which do rule us thus, Yet from their hands none would deliver us.

9. With danger of our life our bread we gat; For in the wilderness the sword did wait. 10. The tempests of this famine we lived in, Black as an oven colour’d had our skin.

11. In Judah’s cities they the maids abused By force, and so women in Zion used. 12. The princes with their hands they hung; no grace Nor honour gave they to the elder’s face.

13. Unto the mill our young men carried are, And children fell under the wood they bare. 14. Elders the gates, youth did their songs forbear; Gone was our joy; our dancings, mournings were.

15. Now is the crown fall’n from our head; and woe Be unto us, because we’ve sinnèd so. 16. For this our hearts do languish, and for this Over our eyes a cloudy dimness is.

17. Because Mount Zion desolate doth lie, And foxes there do go at liberty; 18. But Thou, O Lord, art ever, and Thy throne From generation to generation.

19. Why shouldst Thou forget us eternally? Or leave us thus long in this misery? 20. Restore us, Lord, to Thee, that so we may Return, and as of old, renew our day.

21. For oughtest Thou, O Lord, despise us thus, And to be utterly enraged at us?