Happiness is the first word of Isaac Watts's psalm paraphrase, and the poem spends most of its length on a picture of national contentment that any ruler might envy. Then, in the last stanza, it says that this is not the best kind of happiness. The subtitle gives the argument away: "Grace above riches; or, The happy nation." The heading "v.12-15" shows that Watts is reworking a few verses of Psalm 144 into English hymn verse. He is a poet of that tradition, and the poem makes its point through its shape.
The first stanza builds its society out of architecture. Sons are "like pillars round a palace set," and daughters are "bright as polished stones." The comparisons are admiring but also practical, since pillars hold a roof up and stones make a wall. The stanza ends by saying what children are for: they "give strength and beauty to the state." Strength comes first and beauty second, and they are handed out along gendered lines, with sons as supports and daughters as ornament. That division reflects the assumptions of the world the poem was written in. The image of the polished stone also catches the light. These young people are valued as a kind of public splendour.
The second stanza leaves the city for the countryside, where the wealth is livestock and grain: "sheep, / Cattle, and corn, have large increase." Watts's sentences are plain here, and the verbs are quiet ones. Men "securely work or sleep," so labour and rest sit side by side without anxiety. The stanza's last line brings in the only threat: "Nor sons of plunder break the peace." The word "sons" returns from the first stanza, now with a darker partner. The nation's sons can be pillars, or they can be raiders. A happy country needs the right kind of sons, and it needs a peace that nobody smashes.
The third stanza turns on one small word: "But more divinely blest are those." Until now God has not been mentioned. The reader has been walking through a prosperous, orderly, safe land and may have assumed that this is the goal. Watts then lifts the whole scene one level and calls it merely "happy," while those on whom God "Himself with all his grace bestows" are "divinely blest." The phrase "all-sufficient God" matters here. Sufficient means enough, and the stanza implies that a nation could have full barns and strong children and still lack what it most needs. The gift is not only God's favours but "Himself," and the verb "bestows" ends the poem on a note of giving.
The form helps this movement. Long Metre means four lines of eight syllables, and here the lines run in steady iambic beats: "Like pillars round a palace set." The rhyme scheme is ABAB, and the quality of the rhymes shifts. In the middle stanza "sheep" and "sleep," "increase" and "peace," rhyme completely, which suits its picture of settled comfort. The first stanza is looser, pairing "sons" with "stones" and "set" with "state." The third pairs "those" with "bestows" cleanly but "endowed" only loosely with "God." The poem never sounds fancy. Its vocabulary is mostly one-syllable words, and the repeated opening "Happy the city," "Happy the country," "Happy the nation" widens the view from city to country to nation, as if the poet were stepping back to see more of the land. The pattern is so regular that the interruption of "But more" has real force.
What makes the poem worth reading is how quietly it undercuts the things it praises. Watts does not condemn wealth, security or healthy children. He lists them generously and makes them attractive. But he arranges them as steps, so that the reader climbs through everything a nation could want and finds it still has a ceiling. The poem is also a good example of what a paraphrase can do. It takes a few verses of an ancient song and gives them a clear structure and a regular metre, which suits singing and memorising. The argument arrives in the final stanza, where it is easy to remember.