University of Virginia Library

Unheralded, like some tornado loosed
Out of the brooding hills, it came to pass
That Holofernes, the Assyrian,
With horse and foot a mighty multitude,
Crossed the Euphrates, ravaging the land
To Esdraëlon, and then hawk-like swooped
On Bethulîa: there his trenches drew,
There his grim engines of destruction set
And stormed the place; and gave them little rest
Within, till sad their plight was; for at last
The wells ran low, the stores of barley failed,
And famine crept on them. A wheaten loaf
Was put in this scale and the gold in that,
So scarce was bread. Now were the city streets
Grown loud with lamentation, women's moans
And cries of children; and one night there came
The plague, with breath as hot as the simoom
That blows the desert sand to flakes of fire.

Yet Holofernes could not batter down
The gates of bronze, nor decent entrance make
With beam or catapult in those tough walls,
Nor with his lighted arrows fire the roofs.
Gnawing his lip, among the tents he strode—
Woe to the slave that stumbled in his path!—
And cursed the doting gods, who gave no aid,
But slumbered somewhere in their house of cloud.
Still wan-cheeked Famine and red-spotted Pest
Did their fell work; these twain were his allies.
So he withdrew his men a little way
Into the hill-land, where good water was,
And shade of trees that spread their forkèd boughs
Like a stag's antlers. There he pitched his tents
On the steep slope, and counted the slow hours,
Teaching his heart such patience as he knew.

At midnight, in that second month of siege,
Judith had climbed into a mouldered tower
That looked out on the vile Assyrian camp
Stretched on the slopes beyond an open plain.
Here did she come, of late, to think and pray.
Below her, where the spiral vapors rose,
The army like a witch's caldron seethed.
At times she heard the camels' gurgling moan,
The murmur of men's tongues, and clank of arms
Muffled by distance. Through the tree-stems shone
The scattered watchfires, lurid fiends of night
That with red hands reached up and clutched the dark;
And now and then as some mailed warrior strode
Into the light, she saw his armor gleam.
The city, with its pestilential breath,
A hive of woes, lay close beneath her feet;
Above her leaned the sleepless Pleiades.

That night she held long vigil in the tower,
Merari's daughter, dead Manasseh's wife,
Who, since the barley harvest when he died,
Had dwelt three years a widow in her house,
And looked on no man: where Manasseh slept
In his strait sepulchre, there slept her heart.
Yet dear to her, and for his memory dear,
Was Israel, the chosen people, now
How shorn of glory! Hither had she come
To pray in the still starlight, far from those
Who watched or wept in the sad world below,
And in the midnight, in the tower alone,
She knelt and prayed as one that doubted not:

Then Judith loosed the hair about her brows,
About her brows the long black tresses loosed,
And bent her head, and wept for Israel.
And while she wept, bowed like a lotus flower
That leans to its own shadow in the Nile,
A strangest silence fell upon the land;
Like to a sea-mist spreading east and west
It spread, and close on this there came a sound
Of snow-soft plumage rustling in the dark,
And voices that such magic whisperings made
As the sea makes at twilight on a strip
Of sand and pebble. Slowly from her knees
Judith arose, but dared not lift her eyes,
Awed with the sense that now beside her stood
A God's white Angel, though she saw him not,
While round the tower a wingèd retinue
In the wind's eddies drifted; then the world
Crumbled and vanished, and nought else she knew.
The Angel stooped, and from his luminous brow
And from the branch of amaranth he bore
A gleam fell on her, touching eyes and lips
With light ineffable, and she became
Fairer than morning in Arabia.
On cheek and brow and bosom lay such tint
As in the golden process of mid-June
Creeps up the slender stem to dye the rose.
Then silently the Presence spread his vans.
Like one that from a lethargy awakes
The Hebrew woman started: in the tower
No wingèd thing was, save on a crossbeam
A twittering sparrow; from the underworld
Came sounds of pawing hoof, and clink of steel;
And where the black horizon blackest lay
A moment gone, a thread of purple ran
That changed to rose, and then to sudden gold.

And Judith stood bewildered, with flushed cheek
Pressed to the stone-work. When she knelt to pray
It was dead night, and now 't was break of dawn;
Yet had not sleep upon her eyelids set
Its purple seal. In this strange interval
Of void or trance, or slumber-mocking death,
What had befallen? As a skein of flax,
Dropped by a weaver seated at his loom,
Lies in a tangle, and but knots the more,
And slips the fingers seeking for the clue:
So all her thought lay tangled in her brain,
And what had chanced eluded memory.

Now was day risen; on the green foothills
Men were in motion, and such life as was
In the sad city dragged itself to light.
Then Judith turned, and slowly down the stair
Descended to the court. Outside the gate,
In the broad sun, lounged Achior, lately fled
From Holofernes; as she passed she spoke:
“The Lord be with thee, Achior, all thy days.”
And Achior—captain of the Ammonites,
In exile, but befriended of the Jews—
Paused, and looked after her with pensive eyes.
Unknown of any one, these many months
His corselet held a hopeless tender heart
For dead Manasseh's wife—too fair she was,
And rich—this day how wonderfully fair!
But she, unheedful, crossed the tile-paved court,
And passing through an archway reached the place
Where underneath an ancient aloe-tree
Sat Chabris with Ozias and his friend
Charmis, patriarchs of the leaguered town.

There Judith halted, and obeisance made
With hands crossed on her breast, as was most meet,
They being aged men and governors.
And as she bent before them where they sate,
They marvelled much that in that stricken town
Was one face left not hunger-pinched, or wan,
With grief's acquaintance: such was Judith's face.
And white-haired Charmis looked on her, and said:
“This woman walketh in the light of God.”

“Would it were so!” said Judith. “I know not;
But this I know, that where faith is, is light.
Let us not doubt Him! If we doubt we die.
Oh, is it true, Ozias, thou hast mind
To yield the city to our enemies
After five days, unless the Lord shall stoop
From heaven to save us?”

And Ozias said:
“Our young men perish on the battlements;
Our wives and children by the empty wells
Lie down and perish.”

“If we doubt we die.
But whoso trusts in God, as Isaac did,
Though suffering greatly even to the end,
Dwells in a citadel upon a rock;
Wave shall not reach it, nor fire topple down.”

“Our young men perish on the battlements,”
Answered Ozias; “by the dusty tanks,
Our wives and children.”

“They shall go and dwell
With Seers and Prophets in eternal life.
Is there no God?”

“One only,” Chabris spoke,
“But now His face is turned aside from us.
He sees not Israel.”

“Is His mercy less
Than Holofernes'? Shall we place our trust
In this fierce bull of Asshur?”

“Five days more,”
Said old Ozias, “we shall trust in God.”

“Ah! His time is not man's time,” Judith cried,
“And why should we, the dust beneath His feet,
Decide the hour of our deliverance,
Saying to Him: Thus shalt Thou do, and so?
Ozias, thou to whom the heart of man
Is as a scroll illegible, dost thou
Pretend to read the mystery of God?”

Then gray Ozias bowed his head, abashed,
And spoke not; but the white-haired Charmis spoke:
“The woman sayeth wisely. We are wrong
That in our anguish mock the Lord our God,
Staff that we rest on, stream whereat we drink!”
And then to Judith: “Child, what wouldst thou have?”

“I cannot answer thee, nor make it plain
In my own thought. This night I had a dream
Not born of sleep, for both my eyes were wide,
My sense alive—a vision, if thou wilt,
Of which the scattered fragments in my mind
Are as the fragments of a crystal vase
That, slipping from the slave-girl's careless hand,
Falls on the marble. No most cunning skill
Shall join the pieces and make whole the vase.
So with my vision. I seem still to hear
Strange voices round me, inarticulate—
Words shaped and uttered by invisible lips;
At whiles there seems a palm close pressed to mine
That fain would lead me somewhere. I know not
What all portends. Some great event is near.
Last night celestial spirits were on wing
Over the city. As I sat alone
Within the tower, upon the stroke of twelve—
Look, look, Ozias! Charmis, Chabris, look!
See ye not, yonder, a white mailèd hand
That with its levelled finger points through air!”

The three old men, with lifted, startled eyes,
Turned, and beheld on the transparent void
A phantom hand in silver gauntlet clad
With stretched forefinger; and they spake no word,
But in the loose folds of their saffron robes
Their wan and meagre faces muffled up,
And sat there, like those statues which the wind
Near some old city on a desert's edge
Wraps to the brow in cerements of red dust.

After a silence Judith softly said:
“'T is gone! Fear not; it was a sign to me,
To me alone. Ozias, didst thou mark
The way it pointed?—to the Eastern Gate!
Send the guard orders not to stay me there.
O question not! I but obey the sign.
I must go hence. Before the shadows fall
Upon the courtyard thrice, I shall return,
Else shall men's eyes not look upon me more.
What darkness lies between this hour and that
Tongue may not say. The thing I can I will,
Leaning on God, remembering what befell
Jacob in Syria when he fed the flocks
Of Laban, and how Isaac in his day,
And Abraham, were chastened by the Lord.
Wait thou in patience; till I come, keep thou
The sanctuaries.” And the three gave oath
To hold the town; and if they held it not,
Then should she find them in the synagogue
Dead near the sacred ark; the spearmen dead
At the four gates; upon the battlements
The archers bleaching. “Be it so,” she said,
“Yet be it not so! Shield me with thy prayers!”

Then Judith made obeisance as before,
Passed on, and left them pondering her words
And that weird spectre hand in silver mail,
Which, vanishing, had left a moth-like glow
Against the empty, unsubstantial air.
Still were their eyes fixed on it in mute awe.

When Judith gained her room in the dull court,
Where all the houses in the shadow lay
Of the great synagogue, she threw aside
The livery of grief, and in her hair
Braided a thread of opals, on her breasts
Poured precious ointment, and put on the robe
That in a chest of camphor-wood had lain
Unworn since she was wed—the rustling robe,
Heavy with vine-work, delicate flower and star,
And looped at the brown shoulder with a pearl
To ransom princes. Had he seen her then,
The sad young captain of the Ammonites,
Had he by chance but seen her as she stood
Clasping her girdle, it had been despair!

Then Judith veiled her face, and took her scarf,
And wrapped the scarf about her, and went forth
Into the street with Marah, the handmaid.
It was the hour when all the wretched folk
Haunted the market-stalls to get such scraps
As famine left; the rich bazaars were closed,
Those of the cloth-merchants and jewellers;
But to the booths where aught to eat was had,
The starving crowds converged, vociferous.
Thus at that hour the narrow streets were thronged.
And as in summer when the bearded wheat,
With single impulse leaning all one way,
Follows the convolutions of the wind,
And parts to left or right, as the wind veers:
So went men's eyes with Judith, so the crowd
Parted to give her passage. On she pressed
Through noisome lanes where poverty made lair,
By stately marble porticos pressed on
To the East Gate, a grille of triple bronze,
That lifted at her word, and then shut down
With horrid clangor. The crude daylight there
Dazed her an instant; then she set her face
Towards Holofernes' camp in the hill-land.