Explore "Tales of a Wayside Inn" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Rabbi Ben Levi, on the Sabbath, read / A volume of the Law, in which it said, / "No man shall look upon my face and live. " / And as he read, he prayed that God would give / His faithful servant grace with mortal eye / To look upon His face and yet not die.
Then fell a sudden shadow on the page, / And, lifting up his eyes, grown dim with age / He saw the Angel of Death before him stand, / Holding a naked sword in his right hand. / Rabbi Ben Levi was a righteous man, / Yet through his veins a chill of terror ran. / With trembling voice he said, "What wilt thou here? " / The angel answered, "Lo! the time draws near / When thou must die; yet first, by God's decree, / Whate'er thou askest shall be granted thee. " / Replied the Rabbi, "Let these living eyes / First look upon my place in Paradise."