If, Yes and Perhaps Part 7

He made darkness his resting-place, His pavilion were dark waters and clouds of the skies; At the brightness before him his clouds pa.s.sed by, Hail-stones and coals of fire.

The Lord also thundered in the heavens, And the highest gave his voice; Hail-stones and coals of fire.

Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them, And he shot out his lightnings, and discomfited them.

Then the channels of waters were seen, And the foundations of the world were made known, At thy rebuke, O Lord!

At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

He sent from above, he took me, He drew me out of many waters."

"Mine were but a few verses," said Homer. "I am more than repaid by yours. Imagine Neptune, our sea-G.o.d, looking on a battle:--

"There he sat high, retired from the seas; There looked with pity on his Grecians beaten; There burned with rage at the G.o.d-king who slew them.

Then he rushed forward from the rugged mountains, Quickly descending; He bent the forests also as he came down, And the high cliffs shook under his feet.

Three times he trod upon them, And with his fourth step reached the home he sought for.

"There was his palace, in the deep waters of the seas, Shining with gold, and builded forever.

There he yoked him his swift-footed horses; Their hoofs are brazen, and their manes are golden.

He binds them with golden thongs, He seizes his golden goad, He mounts upon his chariot, and doth fly: Yes! he drives them forth into the waves!

And the whales rise under him from the depths, For they know he is their king; And the glad sea is divided into parts, That his steeds may fly along quickly; And his brazen axle pa.s.ses dry between the waves, So, bounding fast, they bring him to his Grecians."[3]

And the poets sank again into talk.

"You see it," said the old Philistine. "He paints the picture. David sings the life of the picture."

"Yes: Homer sees what he sings; David feels his song."

"Homer's is perfect in its description."

"Yes; but for life, for the soul of the description, you need the Hebrew."

"Homer might be blind; and, with that fancy and word-painting power of his, and his study of everything new, he would paint pictures as he sang, though unseen."

"Yes," said another; "but David--" And he paused.

"But David?" asked the chief.

"I was going to say that he might be blind, deaf, imprisoned, exiled, sick, or all alone, and that yet he would never know he was alone; feeling as he does, as he must to sing so, of the presence of this Lord of his!"

"He does not think of a snow-flake, but as sent from him."

"While the snow-flake is reminding Homer of that hard, worrying, slinging work of battle. He must have seen fight himself."

They were hushed again. For, though they no longer dared ask the poets to sing to them,--so engrossed were they in each other's society,--the soldiers were hardly losers from this modest courtesy. For the poets were constantly arousing each other to strike a chord, or to sing some s.n.a.t.c.h of remembered song. And so it was that Homer, _apropos_ of I do not know what, sang in a sad tone:--

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground: Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise.

So generations in their course decay, So flourish these, when those have pa.s.sed away."[4]

David waited for a change in the strain; but Homer stopped. The young Hebrew asked him to go on; but Homer said that the pa.s.sage which followed was mere narrative, from a long narrative poem. David looked surprised that his new friend had not pointed a moral as he sang; and said simply, "We sing that thus:--

"As for man, his days are as gra.s.s; As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; For the wind pa.s.seth over it, and it is gone, And the place thereof shall know it no more.

But the mercy of the Lord Is from everlasting to everlasting Of them that fear him; And his righteousness Unto children's children, To such as keep his covenant, As remember his commandments to do them!"

Homer's face flashed delighted. "I, like you, 'keep his covenant,'" he cried; and then without a lyre, for his was still in David's hands, he sang, in clear tone:--

"Thou bid'st me birds obey;--I scorn their flight, If on the left they rise, or on the right!

Heed them who may, the will of Jove I own, Who mortals and immortals rules alone!"[5]

"That is more in David's key," said the young Philistine harper, seeing that the poets had fallen to talk together again. "But how would it sound in one of the hymns on one of our feast-days?"

"Who mortals and immortals rules alone."

"How, indeed?" cried one of his young companions. "There would be more sense in what the priests say and sing, if each were not quarrelling for his own,--Dagon against Astarte, and Astarte against Dagon."

The old captain bent over, that the poets might not hear him, and whispered: "There it is that the Hebrews have so much more heart than we in such things. Miserable fellows though they are, so many of them, yet, when I have gone through their whole land with the caravans, the chances have been that any serious-minded man spoke of no G.o.d but this '_He_'

of David's."

"What is his name?"

"They do not know themselves, I believe."

"Well, as I said an hour ago, G.o.d's man or Dagon's man,--for those are good names enough for me,--I care little; but I should like to sing as that young fellow does."

"My boy," said the old man, "have not you heard him enough to see that it is not _he_ that sings, near as much as this love of his for a Spirit he does not name? It is that spirited heart of his that sings."

"_You_ sing like him? Find his life, boy; and perhaps it may sing for you."

"We should be more manly men, if he sang to us every night."

"Or if the other did," said an Ionian sailor.

"Yes," said the chief. "And yet, I think, if your countryman sang every night to me, he would make me want the other. Whether David's singing would send me to his, I do not feel sure. But how silly to compare them!

As well compare the temple in Accho with the roar of a whirlwind--"

"Or the point of my lance with the flight of an eagle. The men are in two worlds."

"O, no! that is saying too much. You said that one could paint pictures--"

"--Into which the other puts life. Yes, I did say so. We are fortunate that we have them together."

"For this man sings of men quite as well as the other does; and to have the other sing of G.o.d--"