Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/94

 —sparkling with springs, and where the warbling of birds invites men to tranquil enjoyment—in Palestine there is, or there was, ever at hand those material symbols of unearthly good which should serve to remind man of his destination to a world better and brighter than this.

From the lofty battlements of most of the walled towns the ancient inhabitant of Palestine looked westward upon what was to him an untraversed world of waters: the "Great Sea" was to him the image of the infinite. He believed, or he might believe, that the waves which fell in endless murmurs upon those shores, had come on—there to end a course which had begun—between the two firmaments—where the sun sinks nightly to his rest. From the opposite turrets of the same fenced city he watched for the morning, and thence beheld the celestial bridegroom coming forth from his chambers anew—rejoicing as a strong man to run a race! To those who now, for an hour, will forget our modern astronomy, the Syrian sun-rising well answers to the imaginative rendering of it by the Poet:—the sun, as it flares up from behind the mountain-wall of Edom, seems well to bear out whatever may be conceived of it, as to its daily course through the heavens.

Again, the ranges of Lebanon might be called a sample of the aspects of an Alpine region—a specimen of sublimities, elsewhere found far apart. The loftier summits—the crown of Jebel-es-Sheikh—is