Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/155

Rh imagery and that of the Hebrew poetry, which he might have taken for his model.

"In his description of the women of paradise there is nothing to excite voluptuous ideas. They are said to be virgins—like the virgin daughters of Bethuel, and like the other believers they are restored to the prime of youthful beauty in which mankind may be supposed to have come from the hands of the Creator.

"But as in the 'Song of Solomon' they have neither necks like towers of 'ivory,' nor 'mouths that cause the lips of those that are asleep to speak,' nor 'bosoms like clusters of the vine,' nor 'breasts like two young roes that are twins feeding among lilies,' nor 'the joints of their thighs like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.' They neither invite their paradisiacal partners to kiss them with the kisses of their mouths, nor to lie like a bunch of myrrh, nor to turn, and be till daybreak like a young hart upon the mountains of spices, nor to get him to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense till the shadows flee away, nor to take a thousand current coins from his vineyard, while the keeper of the fruit claims two hundred in return, nor to tempt him to the fields under seductive promises These are the luxuries of other creeds, the figures which the nations of Europe think fitted to excite religious hopes and pious expectations."

"The spouses of the Arabian teacher sit with their dark eyes cast down modestly in the presence of their husbands, like pearls concealing themselves within