Like many other poets of the sixteenth century, George Buchanan wrote classicizing Latin paraphrases of the Psalter. Here is his version of Psalm 117:
Omnes ubique gentium
quos solis ambit orbita,
rerum parentis optimi
laudes libenter pangite.
agnoscite indulgentiam
benignius nos in dies
foventis, et constantiam
promissa certam reddere.
In rather wooden English:1
Everyone, everywhere in the world,
whom the path of the sun goes round,
gladly celebrate the praises
of the Best Father of creation.
Acknowledge his tenderness,
supporting us more kindly
day by day, and his constancy,
which is certain to make good his promises.
Roger Green, whose text I have transcribed above, calls this short poem in (Ambrosian) iambic dimeters displays “simple dignity” and “taut construction,” and notes that the whole turns on the poem’s only two verbs, placed next to each other directly in the poem’s center:
Omnes ubique gentium
quos solis ambit orbita,
rerum parentis optimi
laudes libenter pangite.
agnoscite indulgentiam
benignius nos in dies
foventis, et constantiam
promissa certam reddere.
Indeed, lines 4-6 form a near-chiasmus: direct object, adverb, imperative; imperative, direct object, adverb. The genitive participle in line 7 corresponds to the genitive in similar position in line 3.
The poem is an exhortation, and all the inhabitants of the earth are told to do two things: to speak and to acknowledge. These are of course related: (1) all are to speak the praises of God, who (2) is to be praised in part because of all his kindnesses (indulgentiam) and his faithfulness (constantiam) toward us, with the two nouns placed in parallel position. God’s indulgentia and God himself (referred to by foventis, emphasized by enjambment) embrace “us” (nos) in the word-order.
There aren’t any obvious classical allusions in the poem, but Parens rerum [omnium] is found in classical sources as a reference to the creative power in the cosmo, and, likewise, parens optimus is reminiscent of Jupiter’s common title Optimus Maximus.2
