Climbing out of the Euer Valley a few weeks ago, my heart punching against my chest like a prisoner in despair, I felt my lips contract into the shape of an O, heard the bubbly intake of saliva through my teeth in the exact way my father did, when he was pushing against a wall of effort.
O Cestus, hear!/Such colour Night brings, which yet Love holds dear".
The Byzantine chroniclers have their father welcoming them by quoting a passage from the Book of Isaiah, specifically Chapter 1.2: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for Jehovah hath spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me".
An empty ark where Torah scrolls were once kept still reads Shema Israel (Hear, O Israel) in faded Hebrew.
But despite the snowballing pressure, they'll get to hear "O Canada" after the hockey tournaments if not before.
He said he repeated Sh'ma, "Hear O Israel," the declaration of faith that is often said by Jews facing death.
Murakami's first novel, Kaze no uta o kike (1979; Hear the Wind Sing; film 1980), won a prize for best fiction by a new writer.
The name derives from the initial word of the scriptural verse "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord" (Deuteronomy 6 4).
There is a splendid anthem by William Byrd, written in the fifteen-eighties, which sets to music a Latin text, later translated into English: "Bow thine ear, O Lord, and hear us: let thine anger cease from us.
Its theme is the melody of the Jewish prayer "Shma Yisroel" ("Hear, O Israel"), and it began as a set of variations for woodwinds, strings and percussion before blossoming into a fugue.
