Слике страница
PDF
ePub

O'erheard this speech, and asked "What chucklest at?" 'Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off,

Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best,
Or let the toothsome apple rot on tree,
Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste:
While myself lit a fire, and made a song
And sung it, "What I hate, be consecrate
"To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate
"For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?"
Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend,
Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime,
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch
And conquer Setebos, or likelier He

Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die.

[What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes,

There scuds His raven that hath told Him all!
It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze-

A tree's head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!

'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape !]

SAUL.

I

SAID Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere

thou speak,

"Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.

S

And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,

"Neither drunken nor eaten have we ; nor until from his

tent

"Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth

yet,

"Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be

wet.

"For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,

"Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise,

"To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,

"And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back

upon life.

II

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew

"On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue

"Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat

"Were now raging to torture the desert!"

III

Then I, as was meet,

Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my

feet,

And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was

unlooped;

I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I

stooped;

Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,

That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,

And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" And no voice replied.

At the first I saw nought but the blackness: but soon I descried

A something more black than the blackness-the vast, the upright

Main prop which sustains the pavilion and slow into

sight

Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all. Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof, showed Saul.

IV

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide

On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side;

He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in

his pangs

And waiting his change, the king serpent all heavily hangs, Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come With the spring-time,—so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

V

Then I tuned my harp,—took off the lilies we twine round its chords

Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide-those sunbeams like swords!

And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,

So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done.

They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they

have fed

Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;

And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows

star

Into eve and the blue far above us,-so blue and so far!

VI

-Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate

To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate

Till for boldness they fight one another and then, what has weight

To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand houseThere are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse !

God made all the creatures and gave them our love and

our fear,

To give sign, we and they are his children, one family

here.

VII

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their winesong, when hand

Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand

And grow one in the sense of this world's life.—And then, the last song

When the dead man is praised on his journey—“ Bear, bear him along

"With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm-seeds not here

"To console us? The land has none left such as he on

the bier.

“Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"—And then, the glad chaunt

Of the marriage,-first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt

As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.—And then, the great march

Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch

Nought can break; who shall harm them, our friends?— Then, the chorus intoned

As the levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned. But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul groaned.

VIII

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened

apart;

And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart

From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with a

start

All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at

heart.

So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect.

And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it un

checked,

As I sang,

IX

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No

spirit feels waste,

"Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew un

braced.

"Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up

to rock,

« ПретходнаНастави »