ABSTRACT
Metrical Psalm paraphrase is a Christian tradition, because in Hebrew the Psalms are already poetry, as Philip Sidney and many of his contemporaries recognized. John Donne, in one of the most important contemporary statements on the Sidney Psalmes, called Philip and Mary Sidney "David's successors", who in their "holy zeale" wrote metrical Psalms that "in forms of joy and art doe re-reveale" the words of David to them in English. Most contemporary praise and most modern studies of the Psalmes of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, focus on their art and on their importance as a literary model, yet for some early modern readers these metrical paraphrases retained their function as the Word of God. Mary Sidney emphasizes the clothing metaphor in her graceful dedication to the queen, imagining her presenting the Psalmes as she had presented a New Year's gift of clothing to Elizabeth.
