University of Virginia Library

Oh, sorrow of all sorrows! death of deaths!
The springs of blessing poisoned at their source!
The shadows falling ere the day is done!
I watch the ghastly ruins of my life,
The shattered columns of a vanished joy,
And through them wanders every beast unclean,
And o'er them sweeps the moaning of the blast;
And in my woe I travel o'er again
The strange, drear path that leaves me here alone,
Bowed down in shame, dishonoured, reft of all,
And haunted by the memory of past joys.
Far other was I, when in youth's first dawn
I wandered joyous o'er Samaria's hills,
Life's golden hopes before me. I was clean
From all pollution of the sense or soul;
I never bowed the knee at Moloch's shrine,
Nor joined in dance to queenly Ashtaroth,
Nor with the black-robed company of priests
Sang praise to Baal in Zidonian fanes:
True to my fathers' fame I kept their faith,
And cleaving to the prophets of our land,
The few bright stars that shone in murkiest night,
Became as one of them. We lived in peace
Where Jordan's windings glad the palm-girt plain;
Loud-swelling anthems sang the praise of God,
Our full-toned voices thundered out the words
That Moses heard on Sinai from the Lord;
And oft at eve our grey-haired seers would tell
Of those two mightiest prophets, Israel's pride,
Chariots and horsemen, strong to save or slay,
The Tishbite, and the peasant, Shaphat's son,
From fair Meholah. And the months passed on;
We sowed and reaped, we planted and we built,
Working and praying, till the toil became
Itself a worship. Words of mystic power
Came from my lips, when o'er me poured the flood
Of surging sound, the rushing, mighty wind
Sweeping the chords of life, and stirring thoughts
That must find utterance. And I dreamt my dream
Of honoured age, the crown of honoured life;
I saw myself, my white hairs flowing down,
The snowy mantle reaching to my feet,
And round me gathered all the prophet-band
That owned me as their master; and I stood,
The head and leader of their glorious praise,
As Samuel stood of old.