Classic Poem

Ay , this is he! the bold and gentle boy —
That in lone pastures by the mountain's side
Guarded his fold, and through the midnight sky
Saw on the blast the God of battles ride;
Beheld his bannered armies on the height,
And heard their clarion sound through all the stormy night.

Though his fair locks lie all unshorn, and bare
To the bold toying of the mountain wind,
A conscious glory haunts the o'ershadowing air,
And waits, with glittering coil, his brows to bind,
While his proud temples bend superbly down,
As if they bore, e'en now, the burden of a crown.

Though a stern sorrow slumbers in his eyes,
As if his prophet glance foresaw the day
When the dark waters o'er his soul should rise,
And friends and lovers wander far away,
Yet the graced impress of that floral mouth
Breathes of love's golden dream and the voluptuous south.

Peerless in beauty as the prophet star,
That in the dewy trances of the dawn,
Floats o'er the solitary hills afar,
And brings sweet tidings of the lingering morn;
Or, weary at the day-god's loitering wain,
Strikes on the harp of light a soft, prelusive strain.

So his wild harp, with psaltery and shawm,
Awoke the nations in thick darkness furled,
While mystic winds from Gilead's groves of balm
Wafted its sweet hosannas through the world;
So, when the day-spring from on high, he sang,
With joy the ancient hills and lonely valleys rang.

Ay, this is he! — the minstrel, prophet, king,
Before whose arm princes and warriors sank;
Who dwelt beneath Jehovah's mighty wing,
And from the " river of his pleasures " drank;
Or, through the rent pavilions of the storm,
Beheld the cloud of fire that veiled his awful form.

And now he stands as when in Elah's vale,
Where warriors set the battle in array,
He met the Titan in his ponderous mail,
Whose haughty challenge many a summer's day
Rang through the border hills, while all the host
Of faithless Israel heard, and trembled at his boast;

Till the slight stripling from the mountain fold
Stood, all unarmed, amid their sounding shields,
And in his youth's first bloom, devoutly bold,
Dared the grim champion of a thousand fields;
So stands he now, as in Jehovah's might
Glorying, he met the foe and won the immortal fight.