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“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 passed 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-god, 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 god-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 passes dry between the waves,
So, bounding fast, they bring him to his Grecians.”[C]

[Footnote C: Iliad, vi.]

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.”