HEAR what the desolate Rizpah said, | |
| As on Gibeah’s rocks she watched the dead. | |
| The sons of Michal before her lay, | |
| And her own fair children, dearer than they: | |
| By a death of shame they all had died, | 5 |
| And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side. | |
| And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all | |
| That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, | |
| All wasted with watching and famine now, | |
| And scorched by the sun her haggard brow, | 10 |
| Sat, mournfully guarding their corpses there, | |
| And murmured a strange and solemn air; | |
| The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain | |
| Of a mother that mourns her children slain. | |
| |
| “I have made the crags my home, and spread | 15 |
| On their desert backs my sackcloth bed; | |
| I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks, | |
| And drunk the midnight dew in my locks; | |
| I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain | |
| Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain. | 20 |
| Seven blackened corpses before me lie, | |
| In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky. | |
| I have watched them through the burning day, | |
| And driven the vulture and raven away; | |
| And the cormorant wheeled in circles round, | 25 |
| Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground. | |
| And, when the shadows of twilight came, | |
| I have seen the hyena’s eyes of flame, | |
| And heard at my side his stealthy tread, | |
| But aye at my shout the savage fled: | 30 |
| And I threw the lighted brand, to fright | |
| The jackal and wolf that yelled in the night. | |
| |
| “Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons, | |
| By the hands of wicked and cruel ones; | |
| Ye fell, in your fresh and blooming prime, | 35 |
| All innocent, for your father’s crime. | |
| He sinned,—but he paid the price of his guilt | |
| When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt; | |
| When he strove with the heathen host in vain, | |
| And fell with the flower of his people slain, | 40 |
| And the sceptre his children’s hands should sway | |
| From his injured lineage passed away. | |
| |
| “But I hoped that the cottage roof would be | |
| A safe retreat for my sons and me; | |
| And that while they ripened to manhood fast, | 45 |
| They should wean my thoughts from the woes of the past. | |
| And my bosom swelled with a mother’s pride, | |
| As they stood in their beauty and strength by my side, | |
| Tall like their sire, with the princely grace | |
| Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face. | 50 |
| |
| “O, what an hour for a mother’s heart, | |
| When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart! | |
| When I clasped their knees and wept and prayed, | |
| And struggled and shrieked to Heaven for aid, | |
| And clung to my sons with desperate strength, | 55 |
| Till the murderers loosed my hold at length, | |
| And bore me breathless and faint aside, | |
| In their iron arms, while my children died. | |
| They died,—and the mother that gave them birth | |
| Is forbid to cover their bones with earth. | 60 |
| |
| “The barley-harvest was nodding white, | |
| When my children died on the rocky height, | |
| And the reapers were singing on hill and plain, | |
| When I came to my task of sorrow and pain. | |
| But now the season of rain is nigh, | 65 |
| The sun is dim in the thickening sky, | |
| And the clouds in sullen darkness rest | |
| Where he hides his light at the doors of the west. | |
| I hear the howl of the wind that brings | |
| The long drear storm on its heavy wings; | 70 |
| But the howling wind and the driving rain | |
| Will beat on my houseless head in vain: | |
| I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare | |
| The beasts of the desert and fowls of air.” | |
| |
