Then to our people spake the Deliverer,
’Gibeon is high, yet a host may shiver her;
Gibeon hath sent to me crying for pity,
For the lords of the cities encompass the city
With chariot and banner and bowman and lancer,
And I swear by the living God I will answer. 
Gird you, O Israel, quiver and javelin,
Shield and sword for the road we travel in;
Verily, as I have promised, pay I
Life unto Gibeon, death unto Ai.’

Sudden and still as a bolt shot right
Up on the city we went by night. 
Never a bird of the air could say,
‘This was the children of Israel’s way.’

Only the hosts sprang up from sleeping,
Saw from the heights a dark stream sweeping;
Sprang up straight as a great shout stung them,
And heard the Deliverer’s war-cry among them,
Heard under cupola, turret, and steeple
The awful cry of the kingless people.

Started the weak of them, shouted the strong of them,
Crashed we a thunderbolt into the throng of them,
Blindly with heads bent, and shields forced before us,
We heard the dense roar of the strife closing o’er us. 
And drunk with the crash of the song that it sung them,
We drove the great spear-blade in God’s name among them.

Redder and redder the sword-flash fell. 
Our eyes and our nostrils were hotter than hell;
Till full all the crest of the spear-surge shocking us,
Hoham of Hebron cried out mocking us,
’Nay, what need of the war-sword’s plying,
Out of the desert the dust comes flying. 
A little red dust, if the wind be blowing—­
Who shall reck of its coming or going?’
Back the Deliverer spake as a clarion,
’Mock at thy slaves, thou eater of carrion! 
Laughest thou at us, in thy kingly clowning,
We, that laughed upon Ramases frowning. 
We that stood up proud, unpardoned,
When his face was dark and his heart was hardened? 
Pharaoh we knew and his steeds, not faster
Than the word of the Lord in thine ear, O master.

Sheer through the turban his wantons wove him,
Clean to the skull the Deliverer clove him;
And the two hosts reeled at the sign appalling,
As the great king fell like a great house falling.

Loudly we shouted, and living and dying. 
Bore them all backward with strength and strong crying;
And Caleb struck Zedek hard at the throat,
And Japhia of Lachish Zebulon smote. 
The war-swords and axes were clashing and groaning,
The fallen were fighting and foaming and moaning;
The war-spears were breaking, the war-horns were braying,
Ere the hands of the slayers were sated with slaying. 
And deep in the grasses grown gory and sodden,
The treaders of all men were trampled and trodden;
And over them, routed and reeled like cattle,
High over the turn of the tide of the battle,
High over noises that deafen and cover us,
Rang the Deliverer’s voice out over us.