Deborah was great in her prophesying;
But, though her anger moved through the Israelites,
And the loose tribes her indignant crying
Bound into song, fashion’d to an army;
And before the measure of her song went flying,
Like leaves and breakage of the woods
Fallen into pouring floods,
The iron and the men of Sisera and Jabin;
Not by her alone
God’s punishment was done
On Canaan intending a monstrous crime,
On the foaming and poison of the serpent in Hazor;
Two women were the power of God that time.

Yea, and sullenly down
Into its hiding town,
Even though the lightning were still in its heart,
The broken dragon, drawing in its fury,
Had croucht to mend its shatter’d malice,
Had lifted its head again and spat against God. 
But God its endlessly devising brain,
Its braving spirit, its captain Sisera,
Into the hands of another woman brought: 
In nets of her persuasion
She that wild spirit caught,
She fasten’d up that uncontrollable thought. 
Sisera spake, and the crops were flames;
Sisera lookt, and blood ran down the door-sills. 
But weary, trusting his entertainment,
He came to Jael, the Kenite woman;
A woman who gave him death for a bed,
And with base tools nailed down his murderous head
Fast to the earth his rage had fed
With men unreckonably slain.

But than these wonderfully greater,
Judith, art thou;
The praise of both shall follow like a shadow
After thy glory now,
Who alone the measureless striding,
The high ungovern’d brow,
Of Assur upon the hills of the world
Hast tript and sent him hugely sliding,
Like a shot beast, down from his towering,
By his own lamed
Mightiness hurl’d
To lie a filth in disaster. 
Deborah and Jael, famously named,
Like rich lands enriching the city their master,
Bring thee now their most golden honour. 
For the beauty of thy limbs was found
By a dreadfuller enemy dreadful as the sound
Of Deborah’s singing, though hers was a song
That had for its words thousands of men. 
But thou thyself, looking upon them,
Didst weaken the Assyrians mortally. 
They thought it terrible to see thee coming;
They falter’d in their impiousness,
Their hearts gave in to thee; they went
Backward before thee and shewed thee the tent
Where Holofernes would have thee in to him,
Yea, for his slayer waiting,
Waiting thee to entertain,
Desiring thee, his death, to enjoy, as Jael
Waited for Sisera her slain.

Judith. 
Have done!  Do you think I know not why your souls
Are so delighted round me?  Do you think
I see not what it is you praise?—­not me,
But you yourselves triumphing in me and over me.

A Citizen.  Did we kill Holofernes?