The Desolation of Eyam :: :: University of Virginia Library

Uprose the frenzied monarch, pale and stern;
To the dark madness of his soul a prey;
Dim on Gilboa he saw the watch-fires burn,
Where in their tents the encamped warriors lay.
He gazed upon them—anguish and dismay
Tortured his spirit to its fiercest mood;
He spoke not, prayed not, hope had passed away;
The demon of his fate was unsubdued;
Anger, remorse, and dread his withered soul pursued.

120

II

Undrained the wine-cup, and untouched the feast,
He stood alone in his deserted tent;
Buckler and spear thrown by, as war had ceased;
The robe of state, and stringed instrument,
All in confusion cast, were idly blent.
But what of war, or state, or minstrelsy
Cared he whose anguished mood of frenzy sent,
Warrior, and ministrant, and hand of glee
At distance from the tent where gladness might not be?

III

He had striven in prayer—his prayer was answered not;
In dream his troubled soul was troubled more;
The priest's mysterious symbol, like a blot,
Dimmed and polluted, shone not as before;
Oracle and holocaust ill omen bore;
The glory from the anointed line was gone;
Rage, hate and shame rushed, like a tempest, o'er
His blasted soul, goading him fiercely on
To the dark deed even he, in calmer hour would shun.

121

IV

'Twas night, and issuing from his silent tent,
The moody monarch, forth in deep disguise,
Through the encamped tribes from Gilboa went,
Fearless that friend or foe might recognise.
Right in his track the mountainous desert lies,
Within whose fearful holds enchanted rite
Dread worshippers perform, with obsequies,
Held by his law accursed to Israelite,
That break the sacred rest of death's mysterious night.

V

By hope abandoned, left to sense of crime,
He rushed on desperate in his dark career;
Evil was on him at that awful time,
Madness and misery. Now in the drear
Confines of her polluted cave, his ear
Demands from one, skilled in enchanted spell,
Words that shall call from death the mighty seer,
Whose tried oracular voice his fate may tell;
And seal his blasted doom, or its dark woe dispel.

122

VI

Started the sorceress at the appalling might
Of her own fearful power:—“I know thee now,
Monarch!” she cried, “I know thee by the light
Of phantoms thou demandest—Saul, 'tis thou!”
Waked by the mighty spell, with clouded brow,
He rose—the terrible seer:—low bent the king,
Bowed to the earth, as rarely monarchs bow.—
“What seek'st thou?” cried the prophet, “wherefore bring
Me from my awful rest, by thy disquieting?”

VII

Replied the king—“I am forlorn, distressed;
On every hand comes up the Philistine;
God's spirit has deserted me—oppressed
And wretched, therefore I have sought from thine
Counsel and aid.”—“Saul, by this fearful sign
Ask not from me, God is thine enemy;
And hath removed his glory from thy line.
To-morrow,—and thy host shall vanquished be,—
And thou shalt, with thy sons, ere evening, be with me!”

123

VIII

Ere the next eve, and like the autumn leaf,
Israel all scattered, routed and dismayed,
Fled from the Philistine. Her desperate chief,
In the wild tumult by his fears betrayed,
With the fallen remnant of his house was laid;
And shield and banner, buckler, helm and spear,
Trophies, in Ashtaroth's temple were displayed.
—Saul's race was closed, as told the visioned seer,
A youth of strength and light, an age of crime and fear.