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
thro’ its array, 100
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: 110
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 ardours 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 remand 120
To their place what new objects should enter:
’twas 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.
