How lovely are thy dwellings fair

How lovely are thy dwellings fair.  John Milton* (1608-1674). This metrical version of Psalm 84 was one of the Psalms 80-88, dated ‘April, 1648 . J.M.’ published in Poems, &c. upon Several Occasions (1673). The date of 1648 marks a period between the end of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I, in which there was much tension between the army and Parliament. Milton’s most recent biographers suggest that ‘the psalms chosen have a particular resonance in the context of the impending second civil war’ [of 1648-49] (Campbell and Corns, 2008, p. 192). Milton himself had a note: ‘Nine of the Psalms done into Metre, wherein all but what is in a different Character, are the very words...