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72
LETTERS OF LIFE.

Tarshish, and was tossed by a mighty tempest upon the deep, I was with him. I felt the chill when the "mariners took him up and cast him forth into the raging sea," and entered into the bitterness of his soul, when, sitting under the smitten gourd, he claimed the right to be "angry even unto death." Though I professed no critical knowledge of the language, I could not but be gratified to find that the annexed fragmentary rendering of his soul-cry, "out of the belly of hell!" coincided in many respects with the translation in the Memoir of that admirable linguist, Miss Elizabeth Smith:


To Jehovah I cried from my prison,
He will hear me;
From the depths of the grave I cry,
He heareth my voice.
Thou hast cast me into wide waters,
Floods compass me about;
All thy billows and dashing waves
Roll over me.
I said I am cast out from thine eyes.
Oh, that I might behold once more
Thy holy Temple!
Waters are on every side,
The deep surrounds me,
Sea-weed bindeth my head.
Down to the roots of the mountains I go,
Earth hath shut her bars behind me
Forever.