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 grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth;
For the wind passeth 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 God but this '_He_'
of David's."

"What is his name?"

"They do not know themselves, I believe."

"Well, as I said an hour ago, God'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 countrym