“And God knows, who sees us twain, child at childish leisure, I am near as tired of pain, as you seem of pleasure;— Very soon, too, by His grace gently wrapt around me, Shall I show as calm a face, shall I sleep as soundly! Differing in this, that you clasp your playthings sleeping, While my hand shall drop the few given to my keeping. Differing in this, that I sleeping shall be colder, And in waking presently, brighter to beholder. Differing in this beside (sleeper, have you heard me? Do you move, and open wide eyes of wonder toward me?)— That while you I thus recall from your sleep,—I solely,— Me from mine an angel shall, with reveille holy!” _ELIAB AND DAVID IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH._ 1 SAMUEL xvii. 28. When the Spirit of God came upon Saul, so that he prophesied among the company of prophets that met him, all that knew him beforetime asked one another what was this that was come to the son of Kish? was Saul also among the prophets? Insomuch that it became a proverb, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” No prophet is accepted in his own country; _that_ is become a proverb too. And as with Saul, a young man among the prophets, so with youthful David among the men of war from their youth. Eliab, his eldest brother, knew, as he thought, the pride and the naughtiness of his heart in coming down to the camp to see the battle; but he knew not what sterling stuff there was in the stripling. _Why_ had Jesse’s youngest son come down hither? and with whom had he left those few sheep in the wilderness? Eliab’s anger was kindled against David for his presumptuous and idle curiosity. His scorn was well-nigh as supreme as that of Goliath himself for the youth,—for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance. Quit his proper rusticities and retirement for the valley of Elah, that bristled with spear-heads and resounded with the din of battle! a boy like him, that should be feeding his father’s sheep at Bethlehem! Was there not a cause? None that Eliab knew of, for one. He had never seen anything in the lad to warrant this forwardness. Not to Eliab or his brethren was it given to foresee in that fresh-coloured shepherd boy the present slayer of Goliath of Gath, and the bosom friend of princely Jonathan, and the paulo-post-future king of Israel, Israel’s sweetest singer, and the man after God’s own heart. * * * * * The adage about unrecognised worth, on the part of kinsfolk and neighbours, the proverb of the prophet without honour in his own country and in his father’s house—has its parallel passage in the _Hercules Furens_ of Euripides— ... “οὑ γὰρ ἐσθ’ ὅπου Εσθλόν τι δράσας μάρτυρ’ ἂν λάβοις πάτραν.” Plutarch adopts it in his treatise on Exile, where he says that you very rarely find a wise man taken for such in his own country: “τῶν φρονιμωτάτων καὶ σοφωτάτων ὀλίγους ἂν εὕροις ἐν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν πατρίσι κεκηδευμένους.”