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66
JEPHTHA'S VOW.
From conquest Jephtha came, with faultering step,And troubled eye: His home appears in view;
He trembles at the sight. Sad he forebodes,—
His vow will meet a victim in his child:
For well he knows, that, from her earliest years,
She still was first to meet his homeward steps:
Well he remembers, how, with tottering gait,
She ran, and clasped his knees, and lisped, and looked
Her joy; and how, when garlanding with flowers
His helm, fearful, her infant hand would shrink
Back from the lion couched beneath the crest.
What sound is that, which, from the palm-tree grove,
Floats now with choral swell, now fainter falls
Upon the ear? It is, it is the song
He loved to hear,—a song of thanks and praise,
Sung by the patriarch for his ransomed son.
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It may not be her voice!—Fain would he think
'Twas not his daughter's voice, that still approached,
Blent with the timbrel's note. Forth from the grove
She foremost glides of all the minstrel band:
Moveless he stands; then grasps his hilt, still red
With hostile gore, but, shuddering, quits the hold;
And clasps, in agony, his hands, and cries,
“Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me low.”—
The timbrel at her rooted feet resounds.
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