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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408343" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>King Saul at Gilboa</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">With noise of battle and the dust of fray,<br>Half hid in fog, the gloomy mountain lay;<br>But Succoth’s watchers, from their outer fields,<br>Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields;<br>For, where the yellow river draws its spring,<br>The hosts of Israel travelled, thundering!<br>There, beating like the storm that sweeps to sea<br>Across the reefs of chafing Galilee,<br>The car of Abner and the sword of Saul<br>Drave Gaza down Gilboa’s southern wall;<br>But swift and sure the spears of Ekron flew,<br>Till peak and slope were drenched with bloody dew.<br>“Shout, Timnath, shout!” the blazing leaders cried,<br>And hurled the stone and dashed the stave aside.<br>“Shout, Timnath, shout! Let Hazor hold the height,<br>Bend the long bow and break the lords of fight!”<br>From every hand the swarthy strangers sprang,<br>Chief leaped on chief, with buckler buckler rang!<br>The flower of armies! Set in Syrian heat,<br>The ridges clamoured under labouring feet;<br>Nor stayed the warriors till, from Salem’s road,<br>The crescent horns of Abner’s squadrons glowed.<br>Then, like a shooting splendour on the wing,<br>The strong-armed son of Kish came thundering;<br>And as in Autumn’s fall, when woods are bare,<br>Two adverse tempests meet in middle air,<br>So Saul and Achish, grim with heat and hate,<br>Met by the brook and shook the scales of Fate.<br>For now the struggle swayed, and, firm as rocks<br>Against the storm-wind of the equinox,<br>The rallied lords of Judah stood and bore,<br>All day, the fiery tides of fourfold war.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But he that fasted in the secret cave<br>And called up Samuel from the quiet grave,<br>And stood with darkness and the mantled ghosts<br>A bitter night on shrill Samarian coasts,<br>Knew well the end — of how the futile sword<br>Of Israel would be broken by the Lord;<br>How Gath would triumph, with the tawny line<br>That bend the knee at Dagon’s brittle shrine;<br>And how the race of Kish would fall to wreck,<br>Because of vengeance stayed at Amalek.<br>Yet strove the sun-like king, nor rested hand<br>Till yellow evening filled the level land.<br>Then Judah reeled before a biting hail<br>Of sudden arrows shot from Achor’s vale,<br>Where Libnah, lapped in blood from thigh to heel,<br>Drew the tense string, and pierced the quivering steel.<br>There fell the sons of Saul, and, man by man,<br>The chiefs of Israel, up to Jonathan;<br>And while swift Achish stooped and caught the spoil,<br>Ten chosen archers, red with sanguine toil,<br>Sped after Saul, who, faint and sick, and sore<br>With many wounds, had left the thick of war.<br>He, like a baffled bull by hunters pressed,<br>Turned sharp about, and faced the flooded west,<br>And saw the star-like spears and moony spokes<br>Gleam from the rocks and lighten through the oaks —<br>A sea of splendour! How the chariots rolled<br>On wheels of blinding brightness manifold!<br>While stumbling over spike and spine and spur<br>Of sultry lands, escaped the son of Ner<br>With smitten men. At this the front of Saul<br>Grew darker than a blasted tower wall;<br>And seeing how there crouched upon his right,<br>Aghast with fear, a black Amalekite,<br>He called, and said: “I pray thee, man of pain,<br>Red from the scourge, and recent from the chain,<br>Set thou thy face to mine, and stoutly stand<br>With yonder bloody sword-hilt in thy hand,<br>And fall upon me.” But the faltering hind<br>Stood trembling, like a willow in the wind.<br>Then further Saul: “Lest Ashdod’s vaunting hosts<br>Should bear me captive to their bleak-blown coasts,<br>I pray thee, smite me! seeing peace has fled,<br>And rest lies wholly with the quiet dead.”<br>At this a flood of sunset broke, and smote<br>Keen, blazing sapphires round a kingly throat,<br>Touched arm and shoulder, glittered in the crest,<br>And made swift starlights on a jewelled breast.<br>So, starting forward, like a loosened hound,<br>The stranger clutched the sword and wheeled it round,<br>And struck the Lord’s Anointed. Fierce and fleet<br>Philistia came, with shouts and clattering feet;<br>By gaping gorges and by rough defile<br>Dark Ashdod beat across a dusty mile;<br>Hot Hazor’s bowmen toiled from spire to spire,<br>And Gath sprang upwards, like a gust of fire;<br>On either side did Libnah’s lords appear,<br>And brass-clad Timnath thundered in the rear.<br>“Mark, Achish, mark!” — South-west and south there sped<br>A dabbled hireling from the dreadful dead.<br>“Mark, Achish, mark!” — The mighty front of Saul,<br>Great in his life and god-like in his fall!<br>This was the arm that broke Philistia’s pride,<br>Where Kishon chafes his seaward-going tide;<br>This was the sword that smote till set of sun<br>Red Gath, from Michmash unto Ajalon,<br>Low in the dust. And Israel scattered far!<br>And dead the trumps and crushed the hoofs of war!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So fell the king, as it was said by him<br>Who hid his forehead in a mantle dim<br>At bleak Endor, what time unholy rites<br>Vexed the long sleep of still Samarian heights;<br>For, bowed to earth before the hoary priest,<br>Did he of Kish withstand the smoking feast,<br>To fast, in darkness and in sackcloth rolled,<br>And house with wild things in the biting cold,<br>Because of sharpness lent to Gaza’s sword,<br>And Judah widowed by the angry Lord.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So silence came. As when the outer verge<br>Of Carmel takes the white and whistling surge,<br>Hoarse, hollow noises fill the caves, and roar<br>Along the margin of the echoing shore,<br>Thus war had thundered; but as evening breaks<br>Across the silver of Assyrian lakes,<br>When reapers rest, and through the level red<br>Of sunset, peace, like holy oil, is shed,<br>Thus silence fell. But Israel’s daughters crept<br>Outside their thresholds, waited, watched, and wept.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then they that dwell beyond the flats and fens<br>Of sullen Jordan, and in gelid glens<br>Of Jabesh-Gilead — chosen chiefs and few —<br>Around their loins the hasty girdle drew,<br>And faced the forests, huddled fold on fold,<br>And dells of glimmering greenness manifold.<br>What time Orion in the west did set<br>A shining foot on hills of wind and wet;<br>These journeyed nightly till they reached the capes<br>Where Ashdod revelled over heated grapes;<br>And while the feast was loud and scouts were turned,<br>From Saul’s bound body cord by cord they burned,<br>And bore the king athwart the place of tombs,<br>And hasted eastward through the tufted glooms;<br>Nor broke the cake nor stayed the step till morn<br>Shot over Debir’s cones and crags forlorn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From Jabesh then the weeping virgins came;<br>In Jabesh then they built the funeral flame;<br>With costly woods they piled the lordly pyre,<br>Brought yellow oils and fed the perfect fire;<br>While round the crescent stately elders spread<br>The flashing armour of the mighty dead,<br>With crown and spear, and all the trophies won<br>From many wars by Israel’s dreadful son.<br>Thence, when the feet of evening paused and stood<br>On shadowy mountains and the roaring flood,<br>(As through a rushing twilight, full of rain,<br>The weak moon looked athwart Gadara’s plain),<br>The younger warriors bore the urn, and broke<br>The humid turf about a wintering oak,<br>And buried Saul; and, fasting, went their ways,<br>And hid their faces seven nights and days.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Kendall">Henry Kendall</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408343" data-title="King Saul at Gilboa de Henry Kendall" data-description="With noise of battle and the dust of fray,
Half hid in fog, the gloomy mountain lay;
But Succoth’s watchers, from their outer fields,
Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields;
For, where the yellow river draws its spring,
The hosts of Is..."></div>
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