Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional :: :: University of Virginia Library

The daughter of Jephthah went up with her maidens to the mountains to mourn her virginity before dying by her father's hand in fulfilment of his vow.

Maidens, that mourned with me upon the mountains,
This dedicated sad virginity,
And early frozen river of my youth,
That Death my bridegroom is, my couch the grave,
Let us descend at last, that I may die:
For being his daughter, I may falter not;
First of all things must he keep faith with heaven.
Girls, we have heard—have not our fathers told us?
Of that strange land beat by a western sea;
How there a father bitterly kept faith

With God, and slew his own child for the fleet.
From that paternal, sail-releasing blow
On Aulis beach, a virgin flowed to earth,
Still veiling her bosom from the eyes of men.
Then how should I, a daughter of Israel, quail?
Yet I so love this sunlight, in our fields,
Early to wander pulling simple flowers,
And watch the sun make all this mountain snow
A gradual rose. Alas that I must go,
Yet breathless with the beauty of the place!
And the sweet babble of children must I lack,
But most, the strong caress of him I loved,
The perfect full-eyed, undivided life.
Harder it is for me then, than for those
Who have enjoyed, and suffered, to depart.
Sisters, two things alone I ask of you:
First, that a little, if ye can, ye cheer
My father, either with the lyre or lute.
Then in that hour when the slow-falling sun
Bring evening and the shadows o'er his heart,
Release his eyes of tears with music then;
Though he be pained, yet were he better so,
Than in a tearless patience to decline.

Then him! Ah him, with whom my troth I made,
If he should at the last, more tranquil grown,
Ask one of you for wife, refuse him not!
Too dear I love him than to have him fare
Lonely and listless on through leafless life.
And now must I go downward to the arms
Of my kind father. Be the blow but swift!