The proud throne shall crumble, The tribes of earth shall humble The art that calls her harvests forth, RIZPAH. And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of the harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley-harvest. And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night. 2 SAMUEL, XXi. 10. HEAR What the desolate Rizpah said, As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead. And her own fair children, dearer than they; By a death of shame they all had died, And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side; And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, "I have made the crags my home and spread On their desert backs my sackloth bed; I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks, And drunk the midnight dew in my locks; I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain. Seven blackened corpses before me lie, In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky. I have watched them through the burning day, And driven the vulture and raven away; "Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons, By the hands of wicked and cruel ones ; Ye fell, in your fresh and blooming prime, All innocent, for your father's crime. He sinned-but he paid the price of his guilt When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt ; When he strove with the heathen host in vain, And fell with the flower of his people slain, And the sceptre his children's hands should sway From his injured lineage passed away. "But I hoped that the cottage roof would be A safe retreat for my sons and me ; And that while they ripened to manhood fast, They should wean my thoughts from the woes of the past. And my bosom swelled with a mother's pride, As they stood in their beauty and strength by my side, Tall like their sire, with the princely grace 66 Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart, When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart! When I clasped their knees and wept and prayed, And struggled and shrieked to Heaven for aid, |