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Poem #10: Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare

Apr19

“Everyday one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting, and —if at all possible—speak a few sensible words.”~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy, when skies are grey.
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.
Please, don’t take my sunshine away.

If you like the singer Rufus Wainright and if you like the Keira Knightley/Matthew Macfadyen version of Pride and Prejudice, I found this video in which they are paired with Wainright singing a lyrical version of Sonnet 29. I prefer Emma Thompson for my Elizabeth and the very handsome Colin Firth as Darcy, but this video has some smoldering looks and and chemistry that go well with the sonnet.

And here we have Mr. Macfayden reciting SOnnet 29 in a modern setting:

Drama Daughter thought this one was ridiculous, but I rather liked it.

Here’s a lesson plan for teaching some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, including Sonnet 29.

Enjoy today’s poem, and be thankful, especially if you have someone to love and someone who loves you.

Poem #9: Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

Apr16

“Poets are never allowed to be mediocre by the gods, by men or by publishers.”~Horace, as quoted by Montaigne

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Poets are sometimes rather enamored of themselves and impressed with their own talent, aren’t they? In both this poem and the earlier one by Spenser, the poet says that his beloved is going to live forever —because of this slam-dunk poem I wrote!

“Lovely” has become my adjective of choice lately, but I did think that this version of Shakespeare’s sonnet put to music and sung by David Gilmour (formerly of the band Pink Floyd?) was, well, lovely.

Poetry Friday is happening at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast today. Check it out.

Poem #8: Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Apr14

“Poets, as a class, are business men. Shakespeare describes the poet’s eye as rolling in fine frenzy, from heaven to earth, and giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, but in practice, you will find that one corner of that eye is generally glued on the royalty returns.”~P.G. Wodehouse

You knew Shakespeare was coming up soon. This sonnet, first published in 1609, was the most popular Shakespearean sonnet to make the list, although certainly not the only one.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, and the poems were most likely composed over a period of several years in the late 1500’s. The first 126 sonnets in sequence, which was first published in 1609, are supposedly addressed to a young man, for whom the author has a thing. I’m not convinced.

Sonnets 1-126 seem to be addressed to an unnamed male friend, younger than Shakespeare. The intensity of feeling and the language imply a sexual love, but that is to impose our modern perceptions of sexuality on the poems. Even the most masculine of men were not afraid to express a view of their feelings for other men and admiration of their beauty, unlike the fear modern men have of being thought to be homosexual if they did that. Speculation about Shakespeare’s sexuality is a red herring. In those sonnets, 1-126, we see a growing friendship with the young man and the development of an intensity of feeling. In sonnets 1-17 Shakespeare seems concerned with the desire to urge the young man to marry and reproduce. Then, as the friendship develops and the poet comes to love the young man intensely, we see feelings of grief caused by the poet’s separation from him. They live in different worlds: the young man is a nobleman and that, in itself, is cause for a certain kind of separation. Moreover, the young man is idle and wanton, whereas Shakespeare is a hard-working actor, writer and businessman, and that, too, is a major difference in lifestyle and another level of separation. However, these sonnets reveal a deep love for the young man, an admiration of his exceptional physical beauty, and, perhaps, the payment of dues to a benefactor. ~No Sweat Shakespeare

Whatever. The sonnet itself is a paean to the immutability of Love, and as such, it has been claimed by lovers everywhere as means of expressing undying love to the beloved.

And here’s a heart-rending clip from the movie Sense and Sensibility in which Marianne quotes The Bard’s love sonnet to express her wild sensibility and love for WIlloughby:

Recent blog mentions:
A Circle of Quiet: “I know this is a love sonnet, usually saved for romantic love, but my heart is filled with love for my dear mother today. . . . My mother has been the model of loyalty and faithful love, and it is an honor to be with her in this season of life. Right to the edge of doom, Mama.”
Donna at Quiet Life: We watched Have you heard about the Morgans? again this weekend. This sonnet is recited in a very sweet scene in the movie.
Alyssa at Many Small Things: “I am thankful for Shakespeare because he was just such a darn good writer who provided us with entertaining and fascinating plays and sonnets which are still a joy to read several centuries later.”

Poem #7: The Sunne Rising by John Donne

Apr13

“Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were.”~John Donne

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide
Late school boyes, and sowre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
Call countrey ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knowes, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beames, so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou thinke?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Looke, and to morrow late, tell mee,
Whether both the India’s of spice and Myne
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.
Aske for those Kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

She is all States, and all Princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes doe but play us; compar’d to this,
All honor’s mimique; All wealth alchimie.
Thou sunne art halfe as happy’as wee,
In that the worlds’s contracted thus;
Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee
To warme the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

You can read the poem here with updated spelling, but I rather think the seventeenth century spelling adds to the spirit of the thing.

Arrogant, heedless, self-centered love, true love! And we moderns thought we invented the worship of romantic love! The sunne itself is servant to the lovers in their bed and restricted to their bedroom. And thereby the sunne warms the world, which is also captive to the lovers themselves. In fact the poet and his love are the entire world. Nothing else matters.

Really? Yet, don’t many, many couples, enamoured of one another, freshly in love, thinking that no one else has ever loved as they love, feel exactly like the speaker in Donne’s poem? Lovesickness is a common malady that only the lovers themselves take to be uncommon.

As a poet, Donne has had his admirers and his detractors. Here are a few varying opinions from influential critics.

The “Aginners”:
Ben Jonson: “Don[n]e for not keeping accent deserved hanging.”
Samuel Johnson: ““The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions.”
Stanley Fish: “Donne is sick, and his poetry is sick.”

The Fan Club:
Izaak Walton: “The recreations of his youth were poetry, in which he was so happy, as if nature and all her varieties had been made only to exercise his sharp wit and high fancy; and in those pieces which were facetiously composed and carelessly scattered, – most of them being written before the twentieth year of his age – it may; appear by his choice metaphors, that both nature and all the arts joined to assist him with their utmost skill.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, / Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; / Rhyme’s sturdy cripple, fancy’s maze and clue. / Wit’s forge and fire-blast, meaning’s press and screw.”
T.S. Eliot: “Expert beyond experience, / He knew the anguish of the marrow / The ague of the skeleton; / No contact possible to flesh / Allayed the fever of the bone.”
A.S. Byatt: “His great love poems stir both body and mind in an electric way that resembles nothing else.”

If you’re a part of the latter group, you can get your own John Donne T-shirt here. Or here. Amazing, what you can find, while exploring poetry on the internet.

Poem #6: Song by John Donne

Apr12

“Poetry is prose bewitched.”~Mina Loy

This poem is one of Donne’s early phase, non-religious poems, and it is full of “six impossible things before breakfast.” Yet, even in his pre-Christian days, Donne was familiar with his Bible. Mandrake root: see Genesis 30:14.

GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

DHM: I love the amusing irony at the end, and knowing the greatest irony of all, that Donne became a Christian and married and lost his cynicism about women.
Steve di Bartola: The improbability of true love. I’ve always wondered “what wind serves to advance an honest mind.”

Steve Spanoudis: You might, being critical, complain that this is just a little poem by some guy who had pretty bad luck with the opposite sex and was getting kind of resentful about it. But when the poet is John Donne, you end up with phrases like
…If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow white hairs on thee…
That sound like incantations. Read it twice aloud and I dare you to forget it.
Neocon: The language is archaic, which makes it hard but not too hard. And it’s catchy (pun intended). I memorized it when young, so I can attest to its appeal, including the cynicism it expresses.

Poem #5: Sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser

Apr9

“Who writes poetry imbibes honey from the poisoned lips of life.”~William Rose Benet

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Ah! the poet will immortalize his love in poetry, and her virtues will in turn make his poetry immortal. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!

Edmund Spenser’s most famous poem is probably his epic, The Faerie Queen, but does anyone really read it anymore? Even for an Elizabethan poetry class, it’s way too long, and everyone’s ready to get on to Shakespeare and Donne, right? Carrie, Reading to Know, started with Book 1 and Book 2 of The Faerie Queen, but hasn’t finished as far as I can tell. Mental Multivitamin recommends The Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean, an illustrated retelling of the poem.
C.S.Lewis: “”Beyond all doubt, it is best to have made one’s first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large — and preferably illustrated — edition of The Faerie Queen, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen.””

Sonnet 75 is from Spenser’s Amoretti, a series of sonnets he wrote during his courtship of his second wife. He also wrote another poem called Epithalmion for his wedding to the object of his desire in the sonnets of Amoretti. Anthony Esolen contrasts Spenser’s view of marriage with contemporary “pseudogamy” in this post at Mere Comments.

Other famous Spenserian lines from sundry poems:

“I was promised on a time – to have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.”

“Gold all is not that doth golden seem.”

”My Love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?”

”Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.”

”Make haste therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime,
For none can call again the passed time.”

Poem #4: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe

Apr8

“What is poetry? Not quite getting what you want, and thereby getting something better.”~Robert Peake, explaining The Pleasures of Frustration in Poetry

Skipping over several centuries between poem #3 and poem #4, we come to Christopher Marlowe’s impassioned invitation from a romantic shepherd to his lady love:

COME live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber-studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

I must be un-romantic because the poem immediately made me think of this scene from It’s a Wonderful Life. The scene I’m thinking about starts at about the four minute mark:

Isn’t Mr. Stewart aka George Bailey the epitome of the Passionate Shepherd? Sir Walter Raleigh was about as skeptical as Violet in the movie, and he wrote a poem in which the “nymph” responds to Marlowe’s shepherd.

Other responses to/parodies of Marlowe’s poem:
The Bait by John Donne, in which the beloved becomes a fishy sort of bait for unwary poor fishies. “That fish, that is not catch’d thereby/Alas! is wiser far than I.”

Love Under the Republicans (or Democrats) by Ogden Nash, in which economic necessity cramps true love’s song. “Come, live with me and be my love/And we will all the pleasures prove/Of a marriage conducted with economy/In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.”

Invitation by W.D. Snodgrass.

Raleigh Was Right by William Carlos Williams. “We cannot go to the country/for the country will bring us no peace.” Listen to this poem at PennSound.

“Marlowe was killed in 1593 at the age of twenty-nine. There is something in the meteor-like suddenness of his appearance in the skies of poetry, and in the swift flaming of his genius through its course, that seems to make inevitable his violent end. He sums up for us the Renaissance passion for life, sleepless in its search and daring in its grasp after the infinite in power, in knowledge, and in pleasure.” ~A History of English Literature, Seventh Edition by William Vaughn Moody, Robert Morss Lovett, and Fred B. Millett.

The Passionate Shepherd was written in about 1588 or 1589, but published posthumously in 1599.

Poem #3: St. Patrick’s Breastplate by St. Patrick, c.400

Apr7

This powerful poem/prayer of blessing and invocation is supposed to have been composed by St. Patrick himself both in Latin and in Gaelic. It has at least three titles: The Lorica, The Deer’s Cry, and St. Patrick’s Breastplate. This version is one translation that I found here.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,
through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.

I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim
in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,
in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,
in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,
in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.

I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of vices, against inclinations of nature, against everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.
I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and my soul,
against incantations of false prophets,
against black laws of heathenry,
against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,
against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
against every knowledge that endangers man’s body and soul.
Christ to protect me today against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
through belief in the Threeness,
through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

I thought this musical version was lovely, both the singer and the scenery:

St. Patrick himself, the poet/missionary to whom the poem is attributed, was an interesting character. Read more about him at Wikipedia or at History.com.

Poem #2: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 by Solomon, King of Israel, c.950 BC

Apr6

“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.”~Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Like father, like son. David wrote psalms; his son, Solomon recorded proverbs and the love poem of the Songs of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, an extended meditation on the futility of a life lived without meaning, without God. (Or maybe someone else just wrote Ecclesiastes and put the words into Solomon’s mouth. Scholars are unsure.)

This particular passage from Ecclesiastes talks about the seasons of our lives: the seemingly banal idea, that we are finite beings caught in Time and only able to live as creatures within time, turns out to be quite profound when you think about it. For we live in seasons and times, and yet we have this desire to transcend time and apprehend eternity. Where does this longing for eternity come from? Why do so many writers play with the ideas of time travel and speeding up and slowing down time? Why, if we are creatures of time, does time seem so limiting and foreign to us? Why did Solomon go on to write in verse eleven of this same chapter: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end?”

‘Tis a puzzlement, and meant in some sense for poetry rather than prose.

In traditional Judaic practice, Ecclesiastes is read on Sukkot as a reminder to not get too caught up in the festivities of the holiday and the cares of this life.

“Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There is a Season)” is a folk version of Solomon’s poem put to music by folk singer Pete Seeger with some of the phrases rearranged. Seeger also added the words “turn, turn, turn” and at the end “a time for peace; I swear it’s not too late.” The Byrds then had a number one hit with the song in 1965, riding on the crest of anti-war sentiment.

Judy Collins and Johnny Cash sing the same song:

If you’re looking for something a little more classical, you could try this piece: Meditations on Ecclesiastes: XI. Con brio (…a time of hate and of war…)
by The Philharmonia Orchestra, Hugh Bean, David Jones, David Amos.

Poem #1: Psalm 23 by David, King of Israel, c.1000BC

Apr5

“God is the perfect poet.”~Robert Browning

The oldest poem on the favorites hit parade is an appropriate fit for this day after Resurrection Day and the week after Passover. Psalm 23 only got three listings as a favorite poem, but I think that’s because many people don’t think of the psalms as poems. They are poetry, though, and poetry that has lasted through the ages, through translation, and through application to the lives of many, many people.

The traditional, King James Version goes:

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

For the familiar KJV poetic version, half credit must go to the 47 scholars who met, beginning in 1604, to translate the Bible into English. In particular, the First Cambridge Company translated from 1 Chronicles to the Song of Solomon, and was made up of the following scholars and clergy: Edward Lively, John Richardson, Lawrence Chaderton, Francis Dillingham, Roger Andrewes, Thomas Harrison, Robert Spaulding, Andrew Bing. They in turn relied on the work of earlier translators such as William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.

Thus, the psalms became one of the few examples in the English language of “poetry by committee,” and if you believe, as I do, that all Scripture is God-breathed, then the psalms and other poetry in Scripture are the only poems we have that can boast God himself as Author and Finisher.
Here’s a beautiful musical version of this psalm as performed by the late Keith Green, still my favorite CCM artist:

I grew up a child of the ’70’s, and the version of Psalm 23 that got my attention came from The Living Bible, a Biblical paraphrase by Kenneth Taylor:

Because the LORD is my Shepherd, I have everything I need!
He lets me rest in the meadow grass and leads me beside the quiet streams. He restores my failing health. He helps me do what honors him the most.
Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me, guarding, guiding all the way.
You provide delicious food for me in the presence of my enemies. You have welcomed me as your guest; blessings overflow!
Your goodness and unfailing kindness shall be with me all of my life, and afterwards I will live with you forever in your home.

The images in the psalm of a bed, a table, a journey, and a final rest at home are universal and comforting in any language. Psalm 23 is traditionally sung by Jews in Hebrew at the third Shabbat meal on Saturday afternoon.

Eugene Peterson’s The Message, takes the psalm into contemporary English usage and phraseology, and Phillip Keller’s classic book explicates the psalm form the point of view of a real shepherd:

God, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
makes me feel secure.

You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.

Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.
The Message by Eugene Peterson.

A metrical version of the psalm is often paired with the hymn tune Crimond, which is usually attributed to Jessie Seymour Irvine. The singers here are a boy’s choir called Libera:

The Lord is My Shepherd: An Anthology.
Listen to Psalm 23 in Hebrew.
Psalm 23 resources, including Spurgeon’s exposition of the psalm.
Psalm 23 commentary and sermon aids
Safe in the Shepherd’s Arms by Max Lucado.
The 23rd Psalm, illustrated by Michael Hague.
Psalm 23, illustrated by Tim Ladwig. Urban, African American setting.
Hebrew poetry explained.
Song: The King of Love My Shepherd Is.
Hymn: The Lord’s My Shepherd, I’ll Not Want.