1. Kings die in Chou, and others rise, And in their footsteps tread. Three had there been, and all were wise; And still they ruled, though dead. Ta, Chi, and Wen were all in heaven, When Wu to follow them was given.

2. Yes, Wu to follow them was given. To imitate his sires, And to obey the will of Heaven, He ardently desires. Through all his course this aim endured, And this the people's trust secured.

3. Yes, Wu secured the people's faith, And gave to all the law Of filial duty, which till death Shining in him they saw. Such piety possessed his mind; Such pattern did he leave behind.

4. Thus the one man was Wu—the one, The king, whom all did love. They saw in him the pattern son; Such sons to be they strove. The filial aim in him bright shone; In him were seen the dead and gone.

5. In Wu his sires were thus brought back. The kings that from him spring, Continuing in his steps to walk, Upon themselves shall bring, Through myriad years, to Chou still given, The blessing of impartial Heaven.

6. Ah! yes, Heaven's blessing will descend, And men their names shall bless. Thousands from Chou's remotest end, Their praises shall express. Their sway through myriad years shall last, Nor helpers fail, strong friends and fast.

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.