University of Virginia Library

So then their hynm of victory is done.
Thank God for that. Home are the soldiers gone.
The garlands of the triumph wither brown,
The singing-girls are sleepy, the hoarse crowd
Murmurs itself away. Night rises fast.
The shadows on the canvas of my tent
Deepen, and Jael in her lonely home
Begins to think it over, now the blare
Of clarions do not hail her longer blest.
O lying voice! Methought, I found a crown
Of glory, silvern: out I held my hand
And drew a burnished adder off her nest,
Who stung me redly first, and, when blood dried,
In one small pit of poison deadly-blue.
The name of that ill worm is Infamy.

So the moon comes and silence in her train;
There will not be a many stars to-night.
The wind begins his circuit with a wail.
He tastes and touches at each little peak,
And in the broken furrows like a bird
Sings, out in darkness. Why art thou so sad?
“O blessed among women”—So they sang
With brazen lips to God. But he knows more
And with one great chain binds my heavy soul;
I do not think that God will ever reach
His finger down and ease it. He hates me;
You see, I cannot weep. Does that sound well?
How many evil women can find tears,
Sinning all day. My one great deed of blood
Outweighs, as Horeb, in the scales of God
Against some petty sand-grains. He sees that,
Insists upon it, keeps it in his books
In plain red flaring letters that endure.
These women have a hundred petty ways
Of sinning feebly. He forgets them all.
They sin as ants or flies. He cannot praise
Or blame such creatures, simply lets them be.
I feel all this alone with my own heart.
The solitude is busy with God's voice
Speaking my sin. I am worn and wearied out;
A mere weak woman, after all is said;
Searching the intense dark with sleepless eyes,
Huddled away by the main-pole in the midst,
A curled crushed thing, a blurred white heap of robes,
Moaning at times with wild arms reaching out.
While on my canvas walls the rain-gush comes,
And the ropes scream and tighten in the blast.

So I must watch until my lord return;
The camp of Israel holds to-night carouse,
And Heber sits at Barak's own right hand;
Because I have risen against a sleeping man,
And slain him, like a woman. No man slays
After this sort. The craven deed is mine,
Hold thou its honour, Heber; have thy wine,
Among the captains claim the noblest seat;
And revel, if thou hast the heart, till dawn,
Brave at the board and feeble in the field!

As the sun fell this eve I felt afraid,
For in his fading, as he touched the haze,
I saw in heaven one round ripe blot of blood.
And all the gates of light, whereby he died,
Were wasted to one drop, a crimson seed;
I turned away and made mine eyelids fast;
But deep down in my soul I saw it still
The single reddish clot. The blood was pale;
They say pale blood is deadlier than the red,
And pallid this one drop. I think it came
Out of his forehead underneath the nail.
I had been told that slain men bled so much,
I nerved my soul for rivers and none flowed.
Somehow, his bloodless death was awfullest.
There seemed no reason, why at one swift blow
Of my deft hands this warm flushed sleepy man
Should cease into a statue, as he did,
At one shock of the hammer on his brow.
(I heard a fable once—a trader's tale,
Who sailed from Javan's islands hawking veils—
How with a mallet one struck stone to flesh;
He was a cunning carver, if he did;
But I smote flesh to marble. That's no skill,
Requires a devil only.) He turned once—
Twice—with a sort of little heaving moan,
A strange sad kind of choking under-sound;
And opened at me full great piteous eyes,
Already glazing with reproachful films;—
As with one gasp—I fancy he gasped twice—
He lay there done with, that great goodly man;
And in his sidelong temple, where bright curls
Made crisp and glorious margin to his brows—
So that a queen might lay her mouth at them
Nor rise again less royal for their kiss—
There, in the interspace of beard and brow,
The nail had gone tearing the silken skin;
And, driven home to the jagged head of it,
Bit down into the tent-boards underneath;
And riveted that face of deadly sleep;
As some clown nails an eagle on his barn,
The noble bird slain by the ignoble hand,
So slept the lordly captain at my feet;
His lovely eyes were hardly troubled now;
Yet in his keen grey lips a certain scorn
Dwelt as indignant, that a deed so mean,
Treason so petty, woman-guile so poor,
Should ever stifle out their glorious breath.
As I leant o'er them their serene disdain
Was eloquent against me, more than words,
And easy was the meaning of their scorn
To render and interpret into this—
“Better to be as we are earth and dust
Than to endure, as Jael shall live on,
In self-contempt more bitter than the grave.
Live on and pine in long remorseful years.
Terrible tears are sequel to this deed;
Beat on thy breast, have ashes in thy hair,
Still shalt thou bear about in all thy dreams
One image, one reproach, one face, one fear.
Live, Jael, live. We shall be well revenged.”

This woman was a mother, think of that;
A name which carries mercy in its sound,
A pitiful meek title one can trust;
She gave her babe the breast like other wives,
In cradle laid it, had her mother heed
To give it suck and sleep. You would suppose
She might learn pity in its helpless face;
A man asleep is weaker than a child,
And towards the weak God turns a woman's heart;
Hers being none. She is ambitious, hard,
Vain, would become heroic; to nurse babes
And sit at home, why, any common girl
Is good enough for that. She must have fame;
She shall be made a song of in the camp,
And have her name upon the soldier's lip
Familiar as an oath. And when she dies
She must write Jael on the years to come;
Oblivion only terrifies her heart,
And infamy is almost twin to fame;
But rusting unremembered in the grave
Is worst of all. Let Jael rest secure,
That, if the reprobation of all time
Fall sweetly on her ashes, hers shall be
Perpetual condemnation. Ah, vain heart,
Thou shalt not lie forgotten, till the stars
Fall black into the pathways of the brine.
Can time efface a deed so wholly vile?
She stood, the mother-snake, before her tent,
She feigned a piteous dew in her false eyes,
She made her low voice gentle as a bird's,
Her one hand beckoned to the fugitive,
Her other felt along the poniard's edge
Hid near the breast where late her baby fed.
She drew the noble weary captain in;
Her guest beneath the shetler of her home,
He laid him down to rest and had no fear.
The sacred old alliance with her clan,
The trustful calm immunity of sleep,
Sealing security each more secure.
Ah, surely, he was safe if anywhere
Beneath the mantle which she laid on him.
He was too noble to mistrust her much;
His fading sense felt her insidious arm
Folding him warmly. Then he slept—she rose,
Slid like a snake across the tent—struck twice—
And stung him dead.

God saw to right her, up in Heaven.
The lark outside went on with his old song.
The sheep grazed, and the floating clouds came past—
Yet it was done. Sleep, guest-right, given word,
All broken, each forgotten. She had lied
Against these holiest three and slain him there.
Bonds were as straw; if once she thought of them,
They only gave new keenness to the nail,
And made her right hand surer for the blow.
Pah! she will come to slay her children next
For glory and a little puff of fame;
And so they crowned her, but her myrtle roots
In strange red soil were nurtured, and their leaves
Are never wet with rain, but fed on tears.

Then Israel came with many cymbal-girls
And clashed this noble triumph into odes,
Great pæans full of noise and shaken spears,
Loud horns and blare of battle, dust, and blood.
Then shrilled that old lean shrewing prophetess,
Grey as a she-wolf on some weaned lamb's track,
Her song of death and insult on the slain;
Then Israel's captain, holding by her skirt,
Sang second to her raving with loud words
And hare-like eyes that looked on either side,
As if in dread dead Sisera should rise
And drive him howling up the vale in fear
With nimble heels. This captain who declared
To this old scolding woman Deborah,
“Except thou goest with me I remain.
I dare not face great Sisera alone,
Unless some female fury hound me on.”
The brave words of a captain brave as they,
A leader chiefly bold against the slain,
Fit jackal to the tigress which I seem,
Worthy to share the triumph of her deed;
That makes her almost viler than himself,
The craven hound tied to an old wife's strings.

My marvel is by what insidious steps
The will to slay him ripened in my mood.
For on that morning I had risen at peace,
And all my soul was calmer than a pool
Folded in vapour when the winds are gone.
Wholly at peace, I watched the ray new-born
In blessed streaks and rapid amber lanes
Run out among our vale-heads: low in heaven
One great star floated, rolling yellow light.
For all night long my baby would not rest,
Till the dawn drifted, at whose coming sleep
Drew down his eyelids to my slumber song.
He could doze cradled now beyond my arms;
And, as the day was instant everywhere,
I came and held my station at the door
To draw the glory in and make it mine.
When suddenly a kind of weary mood
At all my mother life and household days
Clouded my soul and tainted her delight.
It seemed such petty work, such wretched toil,
To tend a child and serve a husband's whims;
Meek, if my lord return with sullen eyes,
Glad, if his heart rejoice; to watch his ways,
Live in his eye, hoard his least careless smile;
Chatter with other wives, manage and hoard,
Quarrel and make it up—and then the grave,
Like fifty thousand other nameless girls,
Who took their little scrap of love and sun
Contentedly and died. Was I as these?
My dream was glory and their aim delight;
Should I be herded with their nameless dust?
Achievement seemed so easy to my hand
In that great morning. All my heart ran fire,
And turning I beheld my cradled child,
And caught the coming footstep of my lord
Crisp in the grass. My waking life resumed
Its fetter as he came. Content thee, drudge,
Here is thy lot; fool not thy heart on dreams.
Then with a little weary sigh I rose
To welcome him; and hastily put by
The vision of the morning. As a girl,
Draping herself in secret with fine webs,
Starts at a sudden step and flings them down.
Restless he entered, gloomy, ill at ease,
Then shook himself and laughed his humour off
With an ill grace, relapsing to a frown.
And pushed about the tent arranging robes,
Searching old chests long undisturbed in dust;
Then glancing at the wonder in my face,
Carelessly glancing, roughly he began,—
“You help me none, but marvel with big eyes
At one in household lumber elbow-deep;
Hiding is better than the surest key.
A fight there will be; ay, a game of blows,
Arrows and wounded men and broken wheels,—
No further than a rook flies out to feed
From this tent door. An hour remains to hide
The ore of our possessions, let the dross
Remain and sate the spearman if he comes.”
“A battle,” my lips faltered; all my soul
Flushed out into my face on hearing it.
Was my dream come at last? He made reply,
Misreading my emotion, “Do not fear;
We will stand by and let them fight it out.
We have some friends at court in either camp;
Neither will harm us, let the strong prevail.
We can await the issue and declare
For him who wins!” He laughed, and I was dumb
With bitter scorn against him in my soul,
Loathing my husband. But I tried him more—
“O lord,” I said, “let me arise and arm thee.
The cause of Israel is the holy one.
These heathen are as dust upon the earth.
Let us strike in for Israel, tho' we die!”
“Ay, dame,” he muttered, “he is right who wins,
And Israel may be right for all I care;
Yet Sisera is strong, and wise ones hide,
When arrow sings to arrow in the air.
If right is weak, why then the God of right
Ought to be strong enough to help his own
Without molesting one more quiet man.
But, while we chatter on, the morning ebbs,
I shall sweep off our treasure to the hills.
You and the babe may follow, as you please.
Safe is the upland, perilous the plain;
How say you?” But in scorn I turned away,
And cried “Begone, O feeble heart.” He went
Laughing and left me.

Then the battle shocks
Deepened all morning in the vales, and died
And freshened; but at even I beheld
A goodly man and footsore, whom I knew;
And then my dream rushed on my soul once more;
Saying, This man is weary, lure him in,
And slay him; and behold eternal fame
Shall blare thy name up to the stars of God.
I called him and he came. The rest is blood,
And doom and desolation till I die!