By troops, by thousands, to besiege the town,
I saw the captains, heard the trumpets sound,
And how his forces covered all the ground,
Yea, how they set themselves in battle array,
I shall remember to my dying day."

Bunyan's other essays in the domain of poetry need not detain us long.
The most considerable of these--at least in bulk--if it be really his, is
a version of some portions of the Old and New Testaments: the life of
Joseph, the Book of Ruth, the history of Samson, the Book of Jonah, the
Sermon on the Mount, and the General Epistle of St. James. The attempt
to do the English Bible into verse has been often made and never
successfully: in the nature of things success in such a task is
impossible, nor can this attempt be regarded as happier than that of
others. Mr. Froude indeed, who undoubtingly accepts their genuineness,
is of a different opinion. He styles the "Book of Ruth" and the "History
of Joseph" "beautiful idylls," of such high excellence that, "if we found
them in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should consider that a
difficult task had been accomplished successfully." It would seem almost
doubtful whether Mr. Froude can have read the compositions that he
commends so largely, and so much beyond their merit. The following
specimen, taken haphazard, will show how thoroughly Bunyan or the
rhymester, whoever he may be, has overcome what Mr. Froude regards as an
almost insuperable difficulty, and has managed to "spoil completely the
faultless prose of the English translation":--

"Ruth replied,
Intreat me not to leave thee or return;
For where thou goest I'll go, where thou sojourn
I'll sojourn also--and what people's thine,