"Still strove to speak: my voice was thick with sighs
As in a dream. Dimly I could descry

The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes,
Waiting to see me die.

"The high masts flickered as they lay afloat;

The crowds, the temples, wavered, and the shore; The bright death quivered at the victim's throatTouched-and I knew no more.

Whereto the other with a downward brow:

"I would the white cold heavy-plunging foam, Whirled by the wind, had rolled me deep below, Then when I left my home."

Her slow full words sank thro' the silence drear,
As thunder-drops fall on a sleeping sea:
Sudden I heard a voice that cried, "Come here,
That I may look on thee."

I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,
One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled;
A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,
Brow-bound with burning gold.

She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began:

"I governed men by change, and so I swayed All moods. 'Tis long since I have seen a man. Once, like the moon, I made

"The ever-shifting currents of the blood According to my humor ebb and flow. I have no men to govern in this wood:

That makes my only woe.

1

"Nay-yet it chafes me that I could not bend

One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye
That dull cold-blooded Cæsar. Prythee, friend,
Where is Mark Antony?

"The man, my lover, with whom I rode sublime
On Fortune's neck; we sat as god by god:
The Nilus would have risen before his time
And flooded at our nod.

"We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit
Lamps which out-burned Canopus. O, my life
In Egypt! O, the dalliance and the wit,
The flattery and the strife,

"And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's alarms,
My Hercules, my Roman Antony,

My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms,
Contented there to die!

"And there he died: and when I heard my name
Sighed forth with life, I would not brook my fear
Of the other; with a worm I balked his fame.
What else was left? look here!"-

With that she tore her robe apart, and half
The polished argent of her breast to sight
Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh,
Showing the aspic's bite.-

"I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found
Me lying dead, my crown about my brows,
A name for ever!-lying robed and crowned,
Worthy a Roman spouse."

Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range

Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance From tone to tone, and glided through all change Of liveliest utterance..

When she made pause I knew not for delight;

Because with sudden motion from the ground She raised her piercing orbs, and filled with light The interval of sound. ·

Still with their fires Love tipped his keenest darts:
As once they drew into two burning rings
All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts.
Of captains and of kings.

Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard

A noise of some one coming through the lawn,

And singing clearer than the crested bird

That claps his wings at dawn:

"The torrent brooks of hallowed Israel

From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon, Sound all night long, in falling through the dell, Far-heard beneath the moon.

"The balmy moon of blessed Israel

Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine;
All night the splintered crags that wall the dell
With spires of silver shine."

As one that museth where broad sunshine laves
The lawn by some cathedral, through the door
Hearing the holy organ rolling waves

Of sound on roof and floor

Within, and anthem sung, is charmed and tied
To where he stands, so stood I, when that flow
Of music left the lips of her that died

To save her father's vow;

The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,

A maiden pure; as when she went along
From Mizpah's towered gate with welcome light,
With timbrel and with song.1
1

My words leapt forth: "Heaven heads the count of crimes With that wild oath." She rendered answer high: "Not so, nor once alone; a thousand times

I would be born and die.

"Single I grew, like some green plant, whose root
Creeps to the garden water-pipes beneath,
Feeding the flower; but ere my flower to fruit
Changed, I was ripe for death.

"My God, my land, my father-these did move Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave, Lowered softly with a threefold cord of love

Down to a silent grave.

1 Jephtha's daughter, whose story is told in the eleventh chapter of Judges. Her father made a vow to the Lord that if he were given the victory over the Ammonites he would offer up for a burnt offering whatsoever on his return from the wars should come forth to meet him from the doors of his house. He was successful, and smote the enemy "from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith," but when he went home, "behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances." She was his only child. She acquiesced in the fulfillment of the vow, indeed half insisted upon it, asking only a brief respite from her doom: "Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows." (Compare the similar story in Landor's Iphigencia and Agamemnon, above, p. 248.)

"And I went mourning, 'No fair Hebrew boy
Shall smile away my maiden blame among
The Hebrew mothers'-emptied of all joy,
Leaving the dance and song,

"Leaving the olive-gardens far below,

Leaving the promise of my bridal bower, The valleys of grape-loaded vines that glow Beneath the battled tower.

"The light white cloud swam over us. Anon We heard the lion roaring from his den; We saw the large white stars rise one by one, Or, from the darkened glen,

"Saw God divide the night with flying flame,
And thunder on the everlasting hills.

I heard Him, for He spake, and grief became
A solemn scorn of ills.

"When the next moon was rolled into the sky, Strength came to me that equaled my desire. How beautiful a thing it was to die

For God and for my sire!

"It comforts me in this one thought to dwell, That I subdued me to my father's will; Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell, Sweetens the spirit still.

"Moreover it is written that my race

Hewed Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer On Arnon unto Minnith." Here her face Glowed, as I looked at her.