sword thou didst guard 80
When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? 
Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung
The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her faint tongue
Joining in while it could to the witness, ’Let one more attest,
I have lived, seen God’s hand thro’ a lifetime, and all was for best!’
Then they sung thro’ their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest. 
And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew
Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true: 
And the friends of thy boyhood—­that boyhood of wonder and hope,
Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye’s scope,—­ 90
Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine: 
And all gifts which the world offers singly, on one head combine! 
On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the throe
That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the gold go),
High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,—­all
Brought to blaze on the head of one creature—­King Saul!”

X

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,—­heart, hand, harp, and voice,
Each lifting Saul’s name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice
Saul’s fame in the light it was made for——­as when, dare I say,
The Lord’s army, in rapture of service, strains thro’ its array, 100
And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot—­“Saul!” cried I, and stopped,
And waited the thing that should follow.  Then Saul, who hung propped
By the tent’s cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name. 
Have ye seen when Spring’s arrowy summons goes right to the aim,
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone,
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone
A year’s snow bound about for a breastplate,—­leaves grasp of the sheet? 
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old,
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold:  110
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar
Of his head thrust ’twixt you and the tempest—­all hail, there they are! 
—­Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest
For their food in the ardours of summer.  One long shudder thrilled. 
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled
At the King’s self left standing before me, released and aware. 
What was gone, what remained?  All to traverse ’twixt hope and despair. 
Death was past, life not come; so he waited.  Awhile his right hand
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant, forthwith to remand 120
To their place what new objects should enter: