1. Long and large the O plants grow. Hao plants surely I should know! How can I confound them so? Grief has robbed my eyes of sight, Almost plunging me in night. Others' hands laid in the grave, Those whose pain my being gave.

2. Long and large the O plants grow. Wei plants surely I should know! How can I confound them so? Grief has robbed my eyes of sight, Almost plunging me in night. Others' hands laid in the earth, Those whose suffering gave me birth.

3. Pitcher should be filled from vase; Where this fails, 'tis reckoned base. Than to live as orphan left, Better be of life bereft! Father dead, on whom depend? Mother dead, where find a friend? I, abroad, this sad case know, And, at home, can nowhere go.

4. Father, from whose loins I sprung, Mother, on whose breast I hung, Tender were ye, and ye fed, Now upheld, now gently led. Eyes untiring watched my way; Often in your arms I lay. How could I repay your love, Vast as arch of heaven above?

5. Cold and bleak that southern hill! Tempest fierce with terror thrill. All around is dark, but more Dark the lot which I deplore! Others all can happy be;— Why from grief am I not free?

6. Hill so steep what foot can brave? Blustering winds around it rave. Fierce the winds! As fierce the fate, Which pursues me desolate! Happy all save me alone, Thinking aye of dues undone!

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.