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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.

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

looped;

un

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

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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.

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 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.

VII.

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

last song

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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!"

glad chaunt

Of the marriage,

we vaunt

And then, the

first go the

young maidens, next, she whom

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 unchecked, As I sang: :

IX.

"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,
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

When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious re

ward?

Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men

sung

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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,

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 com

bine!

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

X.

King Saul!"

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, The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its

array,

And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot

stopped,

"Saul!" cried I, and

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

the sheet?

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

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. Awhile his right

hand

Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to re

mand

To their place what new objects should enter: 't was Saul as

before.

I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any

more

Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the

shore,

At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean— a sun's slow decline Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine Base with base to knit strength more intensely so, arm folded

arm

O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

XI.

What spell or what charm, (For, awhile there was trouble within me,) what next should Í

urge

To sustain him where song had restored him?

the verge

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His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields
Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what

fields,

Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?

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