6 JEPHTHAH.
Threatens the white flower of our homes: our wives,
Daughters, and sons are as a prey to them,
And where the children of the Ammonites
Throng not swift hoofs for murder, Jephthah’s men
Blaspheme our sanctuaries inviolate,
And rob us of our dearest. Woe on woe,
The overwhelming summit of a wave
Too black, too concentrate, too impious,
And culminating in a double death,
Hangs imminent to crush the slender sides
And battered bulwarks of our state. O thou
Whose hoary locks and sightless eyes compel
Our pity and our reverence, and whose mouth
Foams with the presence of some nearer god
Insatiate of thy body frail, give tongue,
If tongue may so far master deity
As give his fury speech, or shape thy words
From the blind auguries of madness.
PROPHET.
Ha!
The rose has washed its petals, and the blood
Pours through its burning centre from my heart.
The fire consumes the light; and rosy flame
Leaps through the veins of blue, and tinges them
With such a purple as incarnadines
The western sky when storms are amorous
And lie upon the breast of toiling ocean,
Such billows to beget as earth devours |
In ravening whirlpool guiphs. My veins are full,