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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=530137" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Jonah</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus sung the king—some angel reach a bough<br>From Eden's tree to crown the wisest brow;<br>And now thou fairest garden ever made,<br>Broad banks of spices, blossom'd walks of shade,<br>O Lebanon! where much I love to dwell,<br>Since I must leave thee Lebanon, farewel!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Swift from my soul the fair Idea flies,<br>A wilder sight the changing scene supplies,<br>Wide seas come rolling to my future page,<br>And storms stand ready when I call, to rage.<br>Then go where Joppa crowns the winding shore,<br>The prophet Jonah just arrives before,<br>He sees a ship unmooring, soft the gales,<br>He pays, and enters, and the vessel sails.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah wou'dst thou fly thy God? rash man forbear, <br>What land so distant but thy God is there?<br>Weak reason, cease thy voice.—They run the deep,<br>And the tir'd prophet lays his limbs to sleep.<br>Here God speaks louder, sends a storm to sea,<br>The clouds remove to give the vengeance way;<br>Strong blasts come whistling, by degrees they roar<br>And shove big surges tumbling on to shore;<br>The vessel bounds, then rolls, and ev'ry blast<br>Works hard to tear her by the groaning mast;<br>The sailors doubling all their shouts and cares<br>Furl the white canvas, and cast forth the wares,<br>Each seek the God their native regions own,<br>In vain they seek them, for those Gods were none.<br>Yet Jonah slept the while, who solely knew,<br>In all that number, where to find the true.<br>To whom the pilot: sleeper, rise and pray,<br>Our Gods are deaf; may thine do more than they.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But thus the rest: perhaps we waft a foe<br>To heav'n itself, and that's our cause of woe;<br>Let's seek by lots, if heav'n be pleas'd to tell;<br>And what they sought by lots, on Jonah fell:<br>Then whence he came, and who, and what, and why<br>Thus rag'd the tempest, all confus'dly cry,<br>Each press'd in haste to get his question heard,<br>When Jonah stops them with a grave regard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An Hebrew man you see, who God revere,<br>He made this world, and makes this world his care,<br>His the whirl'd sky, these waves that lift their head,<br>And his yon land, on which you long to tread.<br>He charg'd me late, to Nineveh repair,<br>And to their face denounce his sentence there:<br>Go, said the vision, prophet, preach to all,<br>Yet forty days and Nineveh shall fall.<br>But well I knew him gracious to forgive,<br>And much my zeal abhor'd the bad shou'd live,<br>And if they turn they live; then what were I<br>But some false prophet when they fail to die?<br>Or what I fanci'd had the Gentiles too<br>With Hebrew prophets, and their God to do?<br>Drawn by the wilful thoughts, my soil I run,<br>I fled his presence and the work's undone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The storm increases as the prophet speaks,<br>O'er the toss'd ship a foaming billow breaks, <br>She rises pendant on the lifted waves<br>And thence descries a thousand watry graves,<br>Then downward rushing, watry mountains hide<br>Her hulk beneath in deaths on ev'ry side.<br>O, cry the sailors all, thy fact was ill,<br>Yet, if a prophet, speak thy master's will,<br>What part is ours with thee? can ought remain<br>To bring the blessings of a calm again?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then Jonah—mine's the death will best atone<br>(And God is pleas'd that I pronounce my own)<br>Arise and cast me forth, the wind will cease,<br>The sea subsiding wear the looks of peace,<br>And you securely steer. For well I see<br>Myself the criminal, the storm for me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet pity moves for one that owns a blame,<br>And awe resulting from a prophet's name;<br>Love pleads, he kindly meant for them to die,<br>Fear pleads against him, lest they pow'r defy:<br>If then to aid the flight abets the sin,<br>They think to land him, where they took him in.<br>Perhaps to quit the cause might end the woe,<br>And God appeasing, let the vessel go.<br>For this they fix their oars and strike the main,<br>But God withstands them, and they strike in vain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The storm increases more with want of light,<br>Low black'ning clouds involve the ship in night,<br>Thick batt'ring rains fly thro' the driving skies,<br>Loud thunder bellows, darted light'ning flies,<br>A dreadful picture night-born horrour drew,<br>And his, or theirs, or both their fates, they view.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then thus to God they cry; Almighty pow'r,<br>Whom we ne'er knew 'till this despairing hour,<br>From this devoted blood thy servants free,<br>To us he's innocent, if so to thee;<br>In all the past we see thy wond'rous hand,<br>And that he perish, think it thy command.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This pray'r perform'd, they cast the prophet o'er,<br>A surge receives him and he mounts no more;<br>Then stills the thunder, cease the flames of blue,<br>The rains abated and the winds withdrew,<br>The clouds ride off, and as they march away,<br>Thro' ev'ry breaking shoots a chearful day;<br>The sea, which rag'd so loud, accepts the prize, <br>A while it rolls, then all the tempest dies,<br>By gradual sinking, flat the surface grows,<br>And safe the vessel with the sailors goes.<br>The Lion thus, that bounds the fences o'er,<br>And makes the Mountain-Ecchoes learn to roar,<br>If on the lawn a branching deer he rend,<br>Then falls his hunger, all his roarings end,<br>Murm'ring a while, to rest his limbs he lays,<br>And the freed lawn enjoys its herd at ease.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bless'd with the sudden calm, the sailors own<br>That wretched Jonah worship'd right alone,<br>Then make their vows, the victim sheep prepare,<br>Bemoan the prophet, and the God revere.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now tho' you fear to loose the pow'r to breath,<br>Now tho' you tremble, Fancy, dive beneath;<br>What world of wonders in the deep are seen;<br>But this the greatest—Jonah lives within!<br>The man who fondly fled the Maker's view,<br>Strange as the crime has found a dungeon too.<br>God sent a monster of the frothing sea,<br>Fit by the bulk to gorge the living prey,<br>And lodge him still alive; this hulk receives<br>The falling prophet as he dash'd the waves.<br>There newly wak'd, from fanci'd death he lies,<br>And oft again in apprehension dies:<br>While three long days and nights depriv'd of sleep,<br>He turn'd and toss'd him up and down the deep.<br>He thinks the judgment of the strangest kind,<br>And much he wonders what the Lord design'd;<br>Yet since he lives, the gift of life he weighs,<br>That's time for pray'r, and thus a ground for praise;<br>From the dark entrails of the whale to thee,<br>(This new contrivance of a hell to me)<br>To thee my God I cry'd, my full distress<br>Pierc'd thy kind ear, and brought my soul redress.<br>Cast to the deep I fell, by thy command,<br>Cast in the midst beyond the reach of land;<br>Then to the midst brought down, the seas abide<br>Beneath my feet, the seas on ev'ry side;<br>In storms the billow, and in calms the wave,<br>Are moving cov'rings to my wand'ring grave;<br>Forc'd by despair I cry'd; how to my cost<br>I fled thy presence, Oh for ever lost! <br>But hope revives my soul, and makes me say,<br>Yet tow'rds thy temple shall I turn and pray,<br>Or if I know not here, where Salem lies,<br>Thy temple's heav'n, and faith has inward eyes.<br>Alas the waters which my whale surround,<br>Have thro' my sorr'wing soul a passage found;<br>And now the dungeon moves, new depths I try,<br>New thoughts of danger all his paths supply.<br>The last of Deeps affords the last of dread,<br>And wraps its funeral weeds around my head:<br>Now o'er the sand his rollings seem to go<br>Where the big mountains root their base below;<br>And now to rocks and clefts their course they take,<br>Earth's endless bars, too strong for me to break;<br>Yet from th' Abyss, my God! thy grace divine<br>Hath call'd him upward, and my life is mine.<br>Still as I toss'd, I scarce retain'd my breath,<br>My soul was sick within, and faint to death.<br>'Twas then I thought of thee, for pity pray'd,<br>And to thy temple flew the pray'rs I made.<br>The men whom lying vanity insnares<br>Forsake thy mercy, that which might be theirs.<br>But I will pay—my God! my King! receive<br>The solemn vows my full affection give,<br>When in thy temple, for a psalm, I sing<br>Salvation only from my God my king.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus ends the prophet, first from Canaan sent,<br>To let the Gentiles know they must repent:<br>God hears, and speaks; the Whale at God's command,<br>Heaves to the light, and casts him forth to land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With long fatigue, with unexpected ease,<br>Oppress'd a while, he lies aside the seas,<br>His eyes tho' glad, in strange astonish'd way<br>Stare at the golden front of chearful day;<br>Then slowly rais'd he sees the wonder plain,<br>And what he pray'd, he wrote to sing again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The song recorded brings his vow to mind,<br>He must be thankful, for the Lord was kind;<br>Strait to the work he shun'd, he flies in haste,<br>(That seems his vow, or seems a part at least,)<br>Preaching he comes, and thus denounc'd to all,<br>Yet forty days and Nineveh shall fall,<br>Fear seiz'd the Gentiles, Nineveh believes, <br>All fast with Penitence, and God forgives.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor yet of use the prophet's suff'ring fails,<br>Hell's deep black bosom more than shews the Whales,<br>But some resemblance brings a type to view,<br>The place was dark, the time proportion'd too.<br>A race, the Saviour cries, a sinful race,<br>Tempts for a sign, the pow'rs of Heav'nly grace,<br>And let them take the sign, as Jonah lay,<br>Three days and nights within the fish of prey;<br>So shall the Son of Man descend below,<br>Earth's op'ning Entrails shall retain him so.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My soul now seek the song, and find me there,<br>What Heav'n has shewn thee to repel despair;<br>See where from Hell she breaks the crumbling ground,<br>Her hairs stand upright, and they stare around;<br>Her horrid front, deep-trenching wrinkles trace,<br>Lean sharp'ning looks deform her livid face;<br>Bent lie the brows, and at the bend below,<br>With fire and blood, two wand'ring eye-balls glow;<br>Fill'd are her arms with num'rous aids to kill,<br>And God she fancies but the judge of ill;<br>Oh fair-ey'd Hope! thou see'st the passion nigh,<br>Daughter of Promise, Oh forbear to fly!<br>Assurance holds thee, fear would have thee go,<br>Close thy blue wings and stand thy deadly foe;<br>The judge of ill is still the Lord of grace,<br>As such behold him in the Prophet's case;<br>Cast to be drown'd, devour'd within the sea,<br>Sunk to the deep, and yet restor'd to day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh love the Lord my soul, whose present care<br>So rules the world, he punishes to spare.<br>If heavy grief my downcast heart oppress,<br>My body danger, or my state distress,<br>With low submission in thy temper bow,<br>Like Jonah pray, like Jonah make thy vow,<br>With hopes of comfort kiss the chast'ning rod,<br>And shunning mad despair, repose in God;<br>Then whatsoe'er the Prophet's vow design,<br>Repentance, Thanks, and Charity be mine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Thomas+Parnell">Thomas Parnell</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=530137" data-title="Jonah de Thomas Parnell" data-description="Thus sung the king—some angel reach a bough
From Eden's tree to crown the wisest brow;
And now thou fairest garden ever made,
Broad banks of spices, blossom'd walks of shade,
O Lebanon! where much I love to dwell,
Since I must leave thee Lebanon..."></div>
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