The Man Without a Country and Other Tales Part 5

"What should _I_ sing?" he said.

They did not enter into his notion: hearers will not always. And so, taking his question literally, they replied, "Sing? Sing us of the snow-storm, the storm of stones, of which you sang at noon."

Poor Homer! It was easier to do it than to be pressed to do it; and he struck his harp again:--

"It was as when, some wintry day, to men Jove would, in might, his sharp artillery show; He wills his winds to sleep, and over plain And mountains pours, in countless flakes, his snow, Deep it conceals the rocky cliffs and hills, Then covers all the blooming meadows o'er, All the rich monuments of mortals' skill, All ports and rocks that break the ocean-sh.o.r.e Rock, haven, plain, are buried by its fall; But the near wave, unchanging, drinks it all.

So while these stony tempests veil the skies, While this on Greeks, and that on Trojans flies, The walls unchanged above the clamor rise."[B]

The men looked round upon David, whose expression, as he returned the glance, showed that he had enjoyed the fragment as well as they. But when they still looked expectant, he did not decline the unspoken invitation; but, taking Homer's harp, sang, as if the words were familiar to him:--

"He giveth snow like wool; He scattereth the h.o.a.r-frost like ashes; He casteth forth his ice like morsels; Who can stand before his cold?

He sendeth forth his word, and melteth them; He causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow."

"Always this '_He_,'" said one of the young soldiers to another.

"Yes," he replied; "and it was so in the beginning of the evening, when we were above there."

"There is a strange difference between the two men, though the one plays as well as the other, and the Greek speaks with quite as little foreign accent as the Jew, and their subjects are the same."

"Yes," said the young Philistine harper; "if the Greek should sing one of the Hebrew's songs, you would know he had borrowed it, in a moment."

"And so, if it were the other way."

"Of course," said their old captain, joining in this conversation.

"Homer, if you call him so, sings the thing made: David sings the maker.

Or, rather, Homer thinks of the thing made: David thinks of the maker, whatever they sing."

"I was going to say that Homer would sing of cities; and David, of the life in them."

"It is not what they say so much, as the way they look at it. The Greek sees the outside,--the beauty of the thing; the Hebrew--"

"Hush!"

For David and his new friend had been talking too. Homer had told him of the storm at sea they met a few days before; and David, I think, had spoken of a mountain-tornado, as he met it years before. In the excitement of his narrative he struck the harp, which was still in his hand, and sung:--

"Then the earth shook and trembled, The foundations of the hills moved and were shaken, Because He was wroth; There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, And fire out of his mouth devoured; It burned with living coal.

He bowed the heavens also, and came down, And darkness was under his feet; He rode upon a cherub and did fly, Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

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."[C]

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."[D]

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!"[E]

"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_'