Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/219

Saul's moody hatred, stern Philistia's spear,
His alien wanderings, and his warrior toil,
Found nought so bitter as the rankling thorn
Set by thy madness of ingratitude
Deep in his yearning soul.
                                            What were thy thoughts
When in the mesh of thy own tresses snared
Amid the oak whose quiet verdure mocked
Thy misery, forsook by all who shared
Thy meteor-greatness and constrained to learn
There in that solitude of agony,
A traitor hath no friends!—what were thy thoughts
When death careering on the triple dart
Of vengeful Joab found thee? To thy God
Rose there one cry of penitence, one prayer
For that unmeasured mercy which can cleanse
Unbounded guilt? Or turned thy stricken heart
Toward him who o'er thy infant graces watched
With tender pride, and all thy sins of youth
In blindfold fondness pardoned? All thy crimes
Were cancelled in that plentitude of love
Which laves with fresh and everlasting tide
A parent's heart.
                             I see that form which awed
The foes of Israel with its victor-might
Bowed low in grief, and hear upon the breeze
That sweeps the palm-groves of Jerusalem,
The wild continuous wail,—"Oh Absalom!
My son! My son!"
                                 We turn us from thy tomb,
Usurping prince! Thy beauty and thy grace
Have perished with thee, but thy fame survives—
The ingrate son that pierced a father's heart.