1. With mass of gorgeous flowers The cherry trees are crowned, But none within this world of ours Like brothers can be found.

2. When awful death comes near, 'Tis brothers sympathize. When headlong flight fills plain and height, To brother brother flies.

3. See how the wagtail's head Quick answers to its tail! When hardships great befall our state, Friends, are of no avail. In times of urgent need, We brothers' help receive. Then friends, though good, of different blood, Long sighs will only heave.

4. Brothers indoors may fight; But insults from without Join them at once, and they unite The common foe to rout. In cases such as this, In vain to friends we turn. They may be true, but they'll eschew The danger they discern.

5. Deaths and disorder o'er, 'Mid peace and rest now cold, Some men, alas! their brothers pass, Nor them as friends will hold.

6. With dishes in array, The cup may oft go round; But only where brothers are there, The feast is truly found. 'Tis when they all appear, And each is in his place, That childlike joy, without alloy, Crowns harmony with grace.

7. Children and wife we love; Union with them is sweet As lute's soft strain that soothes our pain. How joyous do we meet! But brothers, more than they, Can satisfy the heart. 'Tis their accord does peace afford, And lasting joy impart.

8. For ordering of your homes, For joy with child and wife, Consider well the truth I tell;— This is the charm of life!

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.