Then further Saul:"Lest Ashdod's vaunting hosts Should bear me captive to their bleak-blown coasts,I pray thee,smite me:seeing peace has fled,And rest lies wholly with the quiet dead.''
At this a flood of sunset broke,and smote Keen,blazing sapphires round a kingly throat,Touched arm and shoulder,glittered in the crest,And made swift starlights on a jewelled breast!
So,starting forward,like a loosened hound,The stranger clutched the sword and wheeled it round,And struck the Lord's Anointed.Fierce and fleet Philistia came,with shouts and clattering feet;By gaping gorges and by rough defile,Dark Ashdod beat across a dusty mile;Hot Hazor's bowmen toiled from spire to spire,And Gath sprang upwards,like a gust of fire;On either side did Libnah's lords appear,And brass-clad Timnath thundered in the rear.
"Mark,Achish,mark!''-South-west and south there sped A dabbled hireling from the dreadful dead!
"Mark,Achish,mark!''-The mighty front of Saul,Great in his life and god-like in his fall!
This was the arm that broke Philistia's pride,Where Kishon chafes his seaward-going tide;This was the sword that smote till set of sun Red Gath,from Michmash unto Ajalon,Low in the dust.And Israel scattered far!
And dead the trumps and crushed the hoofs of war!
So fell the king,as it was said by him Who hid his forehead in a mantle dim At bleak Endor,what time unholy rites Vexed the long sleep of still Samarian heights:
For bowed to earth before the hoary Priest,Did he of Kish withstand the smoking feast,To fast,in darkness and in sackcloth rolled,And house with wild things in the biting cold;Because of sharpness lent to Gaza's sword,And Judah widowed by the angry Lord.
So silence came!As when the outer verge Of Carmel takes the white and whistling surge,Hoarse hollow noises fill the caves and roar Along the margin of the echoing shore,Thus War had thundered!But as evening breaks Across the silver of Assyrian lakes,When reapers rest,and through the level red Of sunset,peace like holy oil is shed,Thus Silence fell;but Israel's daughters crept Outside their thresholds,waited,watched,and wept.
Then they that dwell beyond the flats and fens Of sullen Jordan,and in gelid glens Of Jabesh-Gilead,chosen chiefs and few,Around their loins the hasty girdle drew,And faced the forests huddled fold on fold,And dells of glimmering greenness manifold,What time Orion in the west did set A shining foot on hills of wind and wet:
These journeyed nightly till they reached the capes Where Ashdod revelled over heated grapes;And,while the feast was loud and scouts were turned,From Saul's bound body cord by cord they burned,And bore the king athwart the place of tombs,And hasted eastward through the tufted glooms;Nor broke the cake nor stayed the step till Morn Shot over Debir's cones and crags forlorn.
From Jabesh then the weeping virgins came;
In Jabesh then they built the funeral flame;
With costly woods they piled the lordly pyre,Brought yellow oils and fed the perfect fire;While round the crescent stately Elders spread The flashing armour of the mighty dead,With crown and spear,and all the trophies won From many wars by Israel's dreadful son.
Thence,when the feet of Evening paused and stood On shadowy mountains and the roaring flood,(As through a rushing twilight full of rain,The weak moon looked athwart Gadara's plain),The younger warriors bore the urn,and broke The humid turf about a wintering oak,And buried Saul;and,fasting,went their ways,And hid their faces seven nights and days.
