On the final day of the summer term at my Ayrshire school, the rector used to read from chapter twelve of Ecclesiastes at morning assembly. Sheer poetry!

Now a fascinating new volume, Poets of the Bible, edited and translated from Hebrew and Greek by Willis Barnstone of Indiana University (W. W. Norton and Company, New York, £26.99), offers major biblical poems from the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations, in contemporary English.

Here is an extract from the Ecclesiastes text – with familiar imagery, though lacking the great sonorities of the Authorised Version and that apt quip for holiday time - “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”

THE GOLDEN BOWL BE BROKEN

Remember your creator when you are young

Before the bad days. They arrive and you say,

“I find no pleasure in them, before the sun and moon

And stars are shadow, and clouds come after rain.”

When your watchman is shaky and strong men

Are bent, women who grind are few and idle.

The doors on the street are closed. The noise

From the mill low. Birdsong wakes you

But these daughters of song are weak.

You become afraid of high places

And there is terror on the road.

The almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper

Drags rather than hop. Capers fall apart

And desire fails. A man leaves for his eternal

House and his mourners mill the streets.

Before the silver cord snaps and golden bowl

Is smashed, the pitcher broken against the well,

And the wheel is broken at the cistern,

And dust returns ground to how it was

And a lifespan returns to God who gave it,

Utter vanity, says Koheleth, sheer futility!

NB: Koheleth is the preacher in the Authorised Version