``On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the throe ``That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour 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!''
X.
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 through its array, And up soareth 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---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 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.
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 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.
XII.
Then fancies grew rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed in silence---above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep;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:
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---XIII.
``Yea, my King,''
I began---``thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring ``From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:
``In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit.
``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 palm-fruit. 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 branch ``Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall staunch ``Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine.
``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 ardour, till they too give forth ``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 for ever take flight.
``No! Again a long draught of my soul-wine! 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 ``A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies, ``Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame would ye know?
