Seven Sleepers

In Christian and Islamic tradition, the Seven Sleepers (Arabic: اصحاب الکهف‎, romanized: aṣḥāb al kahf, lit. 'People of the Cave') is the story of a group of youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around 250 CE to escape a religious persecution and emerged some 300 years later. Quotes But the youths lay calmly sleeping; And the angel, their protector, Spake before the throne of glory: “I have watched beside the sleepers, Made them turn in slumber ever, That the damps of yonder cavern Should not cramp their youthful limbs; And the rocks around I ’ve opened, That the sun at rising, setting, May give freshness to their cheeks. So they lie in rest and quiet, In the bliss of happy dreams.” So they lay; and still, beside them, Lay the dog in peaceful slumber, Never whimpering in his sleep. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus as quoted in Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes, ed. by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1876–79. External links