Classic Poem

There is a lonely mountain-top,
A curse upon it lies;
No blade of grass upon it grows,
No flowers greet the eyes.

But cold, bare cliffs of granite stand,
Like sentinels of stone,
Year after year, through wind and snow,
Around a craggy throne.

And on the topmost, coldest peak
There is a spot of woe —
A little tomb, an old gray tomb,
Raised centuries ago.

For there within her grave she lies
Plucked in an evil hour —
The martyred daughter of her race,
Israel's fairest flower!

There Jephthah's maid forever sleeps —
The victim that he vowed —
But four days in the dreary year,
The loneliness is loud.

And Gilead's mourning daughters
Up from the valley throng —
The mountain glens reverberate
With sorrow and with song!

Oh, loud and long and wild they wail
The light untimely spent,
And dance upon the mountain-top
A choral of lament.

And as they dance they seem to see
Another dancer, too,
And hear, amidst the measure rise,
The voice of her they rue!