FUNERAL OF JACOB
And up the stream of days he seem'd to float,
And twice seven years was toiling for his wife:
And all his thought lay heaving like a boat
On the long swell of life.
How statue-like that shape in shadows deep—
Like one of marble in the minster's rest,
With a pale babe—not dead, but gone to sleep
For ever on her breast.
And the white mother's breast may seem to heave,
And the white babe to feel about her face;
'Tis but our restless hearts that thus deceive
The quiet of the place.
And Rachel look'd upon her Israel,—wann'd
Like a white flower with the summer rain,
So she with sweat of child-birth,—her thin hand
Laid in his hand again.
Near Ephrath there's a pillar'd tomb apart;
It throws a shadow on her where she lies—
And she, a shadow on her husband's heart,
Of household memories.
So slowly upward did the cold death creep
From foot to face with its strange lines of white,
Like foam-streaks on a river dark and deep,
Lash'd by the winds all night.
By the rough brook of life no more he wrestles,
Huddling its hoarse waves until night depart;
No more the pale face of a Rachel nestles
Upon his broken heart.
Hush'd is the song, the tribesmen all are bless'd,
According to his blessing, every one;
But still the old man's spirit may not rest
Until he charge each son—
Not where the Pharaohs lie, with incense breathed
Round awful galleries, grim with shapes of wrath,
Hawk-headed, vulture-pinioned, serpent-wreathed,
Hued like an Indian moth—
But lay him where from forest or green slope
To Mamre's cave the low wind breatheth balm,
Chanteth a litany of immortal hope,
Singeth a funeral psalm.
Like a tall ship that beareth slow and proud
A fallen chief, for pall and plume in motion,
The death-dark topmast and the death-like shroud
Pass o'er the quiet ocean.
Silent the helmsman stands beside the wheel,
Silent the mariners in their watches wait,
And a great music rolls before the keel
As through an abbey gate:
Like that tall ship, a grand procession comes
Up from old Father Nile to Hebron's hill;
But no dead march is beat upon the drums,
And every trump is still.
Heartsore, and footsore with the march of life—
Soldier of God, whose fields were foughten well,
Resteth him from the cumbrance and the strife
World-wearied Israel.
Still it sails onward, where the Red Sea fills
With snowy drift of shells his coral bowers,
On through the wondrous land of rose-red hills
To that of rose-red flowers:
The land where aye, through many a purple gap,
The wanderer sees a mountain wall upspring,
And ever in his ear the wild waves flap
Like a great eagle's wing.
Ever I walk with that funereal train—
The stars shine over it for tapers tall,
And Jordan's music is the requiem strain
Drawn out from fall to fall.
Come, O thou south wind! with thy fragrance faint,
Bring from those folded forests on thy breath
Balm for the mummy, lying like a saint
Upon his car of death.
Bear him, ye bearers! lay him down at last
In still Machpelah, down by Leah's side—
On that pale bridegroom shimmering light is cast,
Laid by that awful bride.
