Appendix.
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
1. A Strain of Jonah the Prophet.
After the living, aye—enduring death
Of Sodom and Gomorrah; after fires
Penal, attested by time-frosted plains
Of ashes; after fruitless apple-growths,
5 Born but to feed the eye; after the death
Of sea and brine, both in like fate involved;
While whatsoe’er is human still retains
In change corporeal its penal badge:
A city—Nineveh—by stepping o’er
10 The path of justice and of equity,
On her own head had well-nigh shaken down
More fires of rain supernal. For what dread
Dwells in a mind subverted? Commonly
Tokens of penal visitations prove
15 All vain where error holds possession. Still,
Kindly and patient of our waywardness,
And slow to punish, the Almighty Lord
Will launch no shaft of wrath, unless He first
Admonish and knock oft at hardened hearts,
20 Rousing with mind august presaging seers.
For to the merits of the Ninevites
The Lord had bidden Jonah to foretell
Destruction; but he, conscious that He spare;
The subject, and remits to suppliants
25 The dues of penalty, and is to good
Ever inclinable, was loth to face
That errand; lest he sing his seerly strain
In vain, and peaceful issue of his threats
Ensue. His counsel presently is flight:
30 (If, howsoe’er, there is at all the power
God to avoid, and shun the Lord’s right hand
’Neath whom the whole orb trembles and is held
In check: but is there reason in the act
Which in his saintly heart the prophet dares?)
35 On the beach-lip, over against the shores
Of the Cilicians, is a city poised,
Far-famed for trusty port—Joppa her name.
Thence therefore Jonah speeding in a barque
Seeks Tarsus, through the signal providence
40 Of the same God; nor marvel is’t, I ween,
If, fleeing from the Lord upon the lands,
He found Him in the waves. For suddenly