Sicut Cervus: A Picturesque Example of Simile

For Sunday, March 8, 2026
”Sicut Cervus” by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525 to 1594)

By David Jolliffe

When you’re trying to teach budding readers to notice the complexity and contours of a text—literary or otherwise—one of the simplest authorial techniques you can highlight is simile, a comparison using the words “like” or “as” between two seemingly different items.  Simile is generally taught alongside another “comparing” technique, metaphor, which compares two entities without employing “like” or “as.”  The simple sentence “My love is like a red rose” contains a simile.  The simple sentence “My love is a red rose” contains a metaphor.

At the 11 am service on March 8, the St. Paul’s choir will sing a motet based on the opening of Psalm 42 in the Latin Vulgate Bible, which introduces one of the most sublimely lovely similes in all of holy scripture:  “Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks so longeth my soul after thee, O God.” 

The motet was composed by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525 to 1594), known simply by the name of his hometown, Palestrina, a small burgh about 40 kilometers east of Rome.  The piece is titled “Sicut Cervus,” or “Like as the hart,” in Latin.  It has become one of Palestrina's most popular motets, regarded as a model of Renaissance polyphony, a musical style from roughly 1400–1600 characterized by the simultaneous combination of multiple, independent, and equal melodic lines.

The central representative of the Roman school of Renaissance music, Palestrina is considered by many to be the leading composer of late 16th-century Europe. He moved to Rome as a child and underwent musical studies there. In 1551, Pope Julius III appointed him maestro of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter’s Basilica. He left the post four years later, unable to continue as a layman under the papacy of Paul IV, and held similar positions at St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore in the following decade. Palestrina returned to the Cappella Giulia in 1571 and remained at St Peter's until his death in 1594.