“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, 70
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 for ever
in joy!
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose
sword thou didst guard 80
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 thro’ a
lifetime, and all was for best!’
Then they sung thro’ 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,— 90
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 labour 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!”
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