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.

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. IO

2.

"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!'

3.

Then I, as was meet,

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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 naught 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 through the tent-roof, showed Saul.

4.

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;

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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.

5.

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 cd
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed; 40
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star
Into eve and the blue far above us,

6.

so blue and so far!

– 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 house-
There 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.

7.

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song,

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

expand

And grow one in the sense of this world's life.

last song

When the dead man is praised on his journey

along

And then, the

Bear, bear him

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 chant

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

Naught 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.

:

бо

8.

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 unchecked,
As I sang,-

9.

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,

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The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock

Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear,

And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.

And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,

And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou

didst guard

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When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her faint tongue Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest,

I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best!'

Then they sung through their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest.

And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence

grew

Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true : And the friends of thy boyhood-that boyhood of wonder and hope,

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Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope, Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine;

And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head combine! On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the throe

That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor and lets the gold go) High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,

all

Brought to blaze on the head of one creature

King Saul!"

IO.

And lo, with that leap of my spirit, — heart, hand, harp, and voice,
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice
Saul's fame in the light it was made for· as when, dare I say, 100
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its array,
And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot - "Saul!" cried I, and
stopped,

And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped

By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name. Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim,

And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone, While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone

A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — leaves grasp of the sheet?

Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old,

With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold

Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — all hail, there they are !

- Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his

crest

For their food in the ardors of summer. One long shudder thrilled

All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled
At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 'twixt hope and
despair.

Death was past, life not come: so he waited.

hand

Awhile his right

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