Rizpah

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,And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side.And Rizpah, once the loveliest of allThat bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul,All wasted with watching and famine now,And scorched by the sun her haggard brow,Sat mournfully guarding their corpses there,And murmured a strange and solemn air;The low, heart-broken, and wailing strainOf a mother that mourns her children slain:

"I have made the crags my home, and spreadOn 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 painOf my burning eyeballs went to my brain.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,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:And I threw the lighted brand to frightThe 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,All innocent, for your father's crime.He sinned--but he paid the price of his guiltWhen 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,And the sceptre his children's hands should swayFrom his injured lineage passed away.

"But I hoped that the cottage roof would beA safe retreat for my sons and me;And that while they ripened to manhood fast,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 graceOf his stately form, and the bloom of his face.

"Oh, 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,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 birthIs forbid to cover their bones with earth.

"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,The sun is dim in the thickening sky,And the clouds in sullen darkness restWhere he hides his light at the doors of the west.I hear the howl of the wind that bringsThe long drear storm on its heavy wings;But the howling wind and the driving rainWill beat on my houseless head in vain:I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scareThe beasts of the desert, and fowls of air."