As the wings of doves

This Ode is a musical gem.

1 As the wings of doves over their nestlings;

and the mouth of their nestlings towards their mouths.

2 So also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart:

3 [My heart is delighted and exults: like the babe who exults in the womb of his mother:

4 I believed; therefore I was at rest; for faithful is He in whom I have believed:]

5 He has richly blessed me and my head is with Him:

and the sword shall not divide me from Him, nor the scimitar;

[6 For I am ready before destruction comes; and I have been set on His immortal pinions:

7 And He showed me His sign: forth and given me to drink,

and from that life is the spirit within me, and it cannot die, for it lives.

8 They who saw me marvelled at me, because I was persecuted,

and they supposed that I was swallowed up: for I seemed to them as one of the lost;

9 And my oppression became my salvation; and I was their reprobation because there was no zeal in me;

10 Because I did good to every man I was hated,

11 And they came round me like mad dogs, who ignorantly attack their masters,

12 For their thought is corrupt and their understanding perverted.

13 But I was carrying water in my right hand, and their bitterness I endured by my sweetness;

14 And I did not perish, for I was not their brother nor was my birth like theirs.

15 And they sought for my death and did not find it: for I was older than the memorial of them;

16 And vainly did they make attack upon me and those who, without reward, came after me:

17 They sought to destroy the memorial of him who was before them.

18 For the thought of the Most High cannot be anticipated; and His heart is superior to all wisdom. Hallelujah.]