“Thinkst thou that I am one to be affrighted by the dark? 
  A weakling to be played upon—­a coward or a fool? 
Nay!—­I defy the Israelites!—­Their weapons miss their mark,
  They have roused my utmost anger:  it taketh long to cool.

“But thou!” he said; “but thou!  Methinks had they but threatened thee
  I should perchance have known the very quality of fear;—­
Thou thing of perfect loveliness!  Content mine eyes will be
  Though in the land of Egypt is no blossom for a year.

“But thou art queen, and thou art free;—­free now to go or stay,
  I would not bind thee to my side—­not by one golden hair.—­
Leave thou this land of peril e’er the breaking of the day,
  Or give thy life to my dark life—­and bear what it doth bear.”

Then blanched her face to whiteness of the lilies on her gown,
  And low she bowed as lilies bow in drift of wind and rain;
“My Lord,” she said, “I have no will except to lay it down
  At thy desire.  As I have done, so will I do again.

“Thou art my king; my son is thine.  It is not mine to say
  That I will bear him hence.—­Yet gropes my soul unto a light;
The quarrel is ’twixt Heaven and thee alone—­so I will stay
  With him I love within the tower throughout this fateful night.”

“And if the Angel cometh through the walls of stone and brass—­
  And if he toucheth Egypt’s son, to seal his gentle breath,
Then will we know that God is God, He who hath right to pass
  Our little doors, for He Himself is Lord of Life and Death.”

O when the desert blossomed like a mystic silver rose,
  And the moon shone on the palace, deep guarded to the gate,
And softly touched the lowly homes fast barred against their foes,
  And lit the faces hewn of stone, that seemed to watch and wait—­

There came a cry—­a rending cry—­upon the quivering air,
  The sudden wild lamenting of a nation in its pain,
For the first-born sons of Egypt, the young, the strong, the fair—­
  Had fallen into dreamless sleep—­and would not wake again.

And within the palace tower the little prince slept well,
  His head upon his mother’s heart, that knew no more alarms;
For at the midnight hour—­0 most sweet and strange to tell—­
  She too slept deeply as the child close folded in her arms.

Hard through the city rode the king, unarmed, unhelmeted,
  Toward the land he loaned his bondsmen, the country kept in peace;
He swayed upon his saddle, and he looked as looked the dead—­
  The people stared and wondered though their weeping did not cease.

On did he ride to Goshen, and he called “Arise!  Arise! 
  Thou leader of the Israelites, ’tis I who bid you go! 
Take thou these people hence, before the sun hath lit the skies;—­
  Get thee beyond the border of this land of death and woe!”

Across the plains of Egypt through the shadows of the night
  Came the sound as of an army moving onward steadily,
And their leader read his way by the stars’ eternal light
  While all the legions followed on their journey to the sea.