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 forever in joy!

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Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard

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 through a lifetime, and all was for best'? Then they sung through 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:

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And the friends of thy boyhood -- that boyhood of wonder and hope, Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,

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 labor 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! "

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,

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And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old, no With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold —

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 ardors 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

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Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remand To their place what new objects should enter: 't was 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.

XI

What spell or what charm, (For awhile there was trouble within me,) what next should I urge

To sustain him where song had restored him?-Song filled to the verge 130 His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields

Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields, Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye

And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?

He saith, "It is good;" still he drinks not: he lets me praise life,

Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie

'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky:

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And I laughed - "Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,

Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show

Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!

Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains, And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old trains

Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus

Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, -how its stem trembled first

Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst

The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn, Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palmfruit. Our dates shall we slight, When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight

Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and

Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine!

By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy

More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy.

Crush that life, and behold its wine running!
Each deed thou hast done
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world;
until e'en as the sun

Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface, Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace

The results of his past summer-prime, — so, each ray of thy will,

Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill

Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they too give forth

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A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and the North

With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past!

But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last:

As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height,

So with man — so his power and his beauty forever take flight.

No!

Again a long draught of my soulwine! Look forth o'er the years! Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!

Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb - bid arise

In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,

Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavor

And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever

On the new stretch of heaven above me till, mighty to save,

Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance-God's throne from man's grave!

broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent

Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose,

To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.

So

sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by the pile

Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile,

And sat out my singing,

the tent-prop, to raise

one arm round

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His bent head, and the other hung slacktill I touched on the praise

I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;

And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware

That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees

Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak roots which please

looked up to know

Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,

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And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can ?

Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,

To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower

Of the life he was gifted and filled with ? to make such a soul,

Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole ?

And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)

These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best? Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height

This perfection, succeed with life's dayspring, death's minute of night? Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,

Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, and bid him awake

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I will?

the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth

To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare

Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?

This; 't is not what man Does which

exalts him, but what man Would do!

See the King--I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through. Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would knowing which,

I know that my service is perfect. speak through me now!

Would I suffer for him that I love? wouldst thou so wilt thou!

Oh,

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So

Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,

For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed

the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,

Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.

Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth

Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;

In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills;

In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;

In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:

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E'en the serpent that slid away silent, --he felt the new law.

The same stared in the white humid faces

upturned by the flowers;