1 By flowing streams in Babylon,
when we remembered Zion there,
we sat down and we wept in grief;
2 on willows there we hung our lyres.
3 For there our captors called for songs,
our cruel tormentors asked for mirth.
They called for us to sing to them:
“Come, sing us one of Zion’s songs!”
4 But how can we the LORD’s song sing,
when we are in a foreign land?
5 If I forget Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
6 O let my tongue to my palate cleave
if I do not remember you,
if I set not Jerusalem
above my greatest, highest joy.
7 Remember Edom’s sons, O LORD,
who uttered in Jerus’lem’s day.
“O lay it bare, O lay it bare!
Destroy down to the ground its base.”
8 O Bab’lon’s daughter, doomed to die,
blest be the one repaying you.
Blest they who take your little ones
and dash them cruelly ’gainst the rock!
– Trinity Psalter Hymnal, alt.
Oremus 