University of Virginia Library

MACHPELAH

This small green field, these ancient shadowy trees,
This dim o'er-arching cave, are like a nest
To which my aged senses flee for calm:
Though I have gloried in the open plains,
With boundless distances and mountain bourns;
And I remember, how in Haran's vales,
When the red evening lay along the west,
We wandered through the palm grove hand in hand;
I strong, she beauteous, the desire of kings,
We in the summer morns sat by the wells
While the young lambs were bleating, and the air
Was cleft by swallows, and the camel chewed
The cud with musing eye and smiling lip,
While the spouts gurgled, and the troughs were filled,
And brown, black-bearded herdsmen sang their songs:
For I, too, once was young, and she, my bride,
Went in and out among the milky flocks;
I heard her weave and sing among her maids.
In the bright oasis we pitched our tents,
And when those three strong angels, through the heat
Of the white midday came, she seethed the calf,
And bore her seemly till the heavenly voice
Foretold the birth of Isaac; then she laughed—
The doubtful laugh of unbelieving joy:
Yet Isaac laughed upon her aged knees
Whom afterward I raised my knife to slay.
Then princes knew me, and in active years
Life flamed so high within me that I loved
The bright strong intercourse of human things:
But now the unsteady fire of extreme age
Is like a taper held above a cliff
When the loud sea-wind moves toward the land:
Now many voices and tumultuous things
Sore vex my tottering thought and dimming eye.
Therefore, thou Ephron and ye men of Heth,
Give me for gold this many-shadowed cave,
Where, when the stars come out into the heaven,
And the white villages and dusky trees
Send forth no sound upon the brooding night,
I may sit still, and in mid-silence muse,
Waiting the revelations yet unseen;
For now I walk by faith, and though my eye
Hath seen the sons of God, they come not now.
I seek a country farther than the hills,
Where is their dwelling-place, and look beyond
This complex obscuration of my flesh,
And see the shining of the City of God;
Or else beholding all that I have lost,
Her who through many, many years was mine,
My heart were like Gomorrah's ghastly stones
Or the blank streets of Admah. Let me rest:
And with a distant gaze your youths and maids
Shall softly say: There sits old Abraham
Beside his dead, and there he soon will lie.