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.