A garland of quotations LXXVI

Culled from the finest babblers in literary history (part 2), and re-woven every Wednesday

Think not that a sin committed here in Babylon is less than had it been committed in Athens or Olympia; for a Wise Man Hellas is everywhere, nor consider any land desert or barbarian, since he lives under the eyes of Virtue, who deigns to look but on few men.
•Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (c. 220).

“Forget me, Lord, if I forget
Jerusalem for Babylon,
If I forget the vision set
High as the head of Lebanon
Is lifted over Syria yet,
If I forget and bow me down
To Brutish gods of Babylon.”
•Arthur Colton, “‘Forget me, Lord, if I forget’” (1907).

How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You can get there by candle-light.
•Songs for the Nursery Collected From the Works of the Most Renowned Poets and Adapted to Favourite National Melodies (c. 1835).

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
•Chesterton, “Lepanto” (1911).

                                     Babylon,
Learned and wise, hath perished utterly,
Nor leaves her speech wherewith to clothe a sigh
That would lament her.
•Wordsworth, “Missions and Travels” (1822).

And where one to Thy will a rebel was,
A hundred henceforth will refuse to bow,
Until at last the false and evil laws
Of Babylon will flourish and bring low
All Thy believers; vindicate the cause
Of these Thy people, who their sacred vow
Fulfilled, to guard Thy Holy Church, and cleanse
Thy sacred sepulchre of Saracens.
•Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1532).

And but if he will baptised be
And lefe his fals laye,
Babyloyne shal he never see
For alle his grete aray.
•The Sowdone of Babylone (c. 1400).

In fact, the reader may be surprised to learn that the Babylon captivity is exactly 70 years in length because Israel and Judah had violated 70 Sabbath years.
•Larry Wilson, Great Clocks from God (2000).

Great Babylon is fall’n; amid the dust
Idly inquisitive the trav’ller pries
With patient scrutiny, exploring still,
And still in vain, where Syrian Belus rear’d
In proud magnificence his idol form:
No traces guide around the shapeless mass.
•Francis Wrangham, The Restoration of the Jews (1795).

He said unto me: “Come, I will show you the men of Korah that were swallowed up.” I saw two cracks that emitted smoke. I took a piece of clipped wool, dipped it in water, attached it to the point of a spear and let it in there. And when I took it out it was singed. [Thereupon] he said unto me: “Listen attentively [to] what you [are about to] hear.” And I heard them say: “Moses and his Torah are truth and we are liars.”
•Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Baba Bathra 74a.

but ah! spite of Paschal, Madame Guyon, and Moliere France is my Babylon, the Mother of Whoredoms in Morality, Philosophy, Taste—/the French themselves feel a foreigness in these Writers / How indeed is it possible at once to love Paschal & Voltaire?
•Coleridge, notebook (1805)

References: Philostratus: trans. Kenneth S. Guthrie, The Gospel of Apollonius of Tyana (Kessinger, nd); Colton: Harps Hung Up in Babylon (Henry Holt, 1907); Wordsworth: The Ecclesiastical Sonnets (Yale UP, 1922); Ariosto: trans. Barbara Reynolds, Orlando Furioso Part One (Penguin, 1975); Coleridge: Seamus Perry, ed., Coleridge’s Notebooks: A Selection (Oxford UP, 2003); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.