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. HEAR what the desolate Rizpah said, 2 SAMUEL, xxi. 10. As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead. The sons of Michal before her lay, 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, All wasted with watching and famine now, The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain Of a mother that mourns her children slain: "I have made the crags my home, and spread On their desert backs my sackcloth bed; I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks, I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain Seven blackened corpses before me lie, In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky. "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 "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 Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face. "Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart, In their iron arms, while my children died. Is forbid to cover their bones with earth. G 2 "The barley-harvest was nodding white, When my children died on the rocky height, And the reapers were singing on hill and plain, When I came to my task of sorrow and pain. But now the season of rain is nigh, The sun is dim in the thickening sky, And the clouds in sullen darkness rest Where he hides his light at the doors of the west. I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare THE OLD MAN'S FUNERAL. I saw an aged man upon his bier, His hair was thin and white, and on his brow A record of the cares of many a year ;— Cares that were ended and forgotten now. And there was sadness round, and faces bowed, Then rose another hoary man and said, In faltering accents, to that weeping train, "Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead? Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain, Nor when their mellow fruit the orchards cast, Nor when the yellow woods shake down the ripened mast. “Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled, O'er the warm-coloured heaven and ruddy mountain head. |