Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/52



We dwelt, living long luxuriously in the zananas of this spacious mansion; our condition exempt from misfortune and adversity. Rolled in through our channel.

The sea, swelling against our castle with angry surge; our fountains flowed with murmuring fall, above

The lofty palms; whose keepers planted dry dates in our valley date-grounds; they sowed the arid rice.

We hunted the young mountain-goats and the young hares, with gins and snares; beguiling we drew forth the fishes.

We walked with slow, proud gait, IN NEEDLE-WORKED, MANY-COLORED SILK VESTMENTS, IN WHOLE SILKS, IN GRASS-GREEN CHEQUERED ROBES !

Over us presided kings, far removed from baseness, and stern chastisers of reprobate and wicked men. They noted down for us according to the doctrine of Heber,

Good judgments, written in books to be kept; and we proclaimed our belief in miracles, in the resurrection, in the return into the nostrils of the breath of life.

Made an inroad robbers, and would do us violence; we rode forth, we and our generous youth, with stiff and sharp-pointed spears; rushing onward.

Proud champions of our families and wives; fighting valiantly upon coursers with long necks, dun-colored, iron-gray, and bright bay.

With our swords still wounding and piercing our adversaries, until charging home, we conquered and crushed this refuse of mankind.

On the subject of these inscriptions, Mr. Forster, in the dedication of his book to the Archbishop of Canterbury, thus remarks: "What Job (who, living in the opposite quarter of Arabia, amid the sands of the great Northern desert, had no lasting material within reach on which to perpetuate his thoughts,) so earnestly desired, stands here realized." "Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a Book! That (like the kindred creed of the lost tribe of Ad) they were graven with an iron pen, and lead, in the rock forever. (For mine is a better and brighter revelation than theirs.) For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in the flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another."