Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 2 (1869).djvu/89

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JACOB.
75

And, as he ended,
Isaac spoke and said,
Surely my heart
went with you on the way,
When with the beasts
ye came unto the place.

Truly, O child
of Nahor, I was there,
When to thy mother
and thy mother's son
Thou madest answer,
saying, I will go.
And Isaac brought her
to his mother's tent.

JACOB.

My sons, and ye the children of my sons,
Jacob your father goes upon his way,
His pilgrimage is being accomplished.
Come near and hear him ere his words are o'er.
Not as my father's or his father's days,
As Isaac's days or Abraham's, have been mine;
Not as the days of those that in the field
Walked at the eventide to meditate,
And haply, to the tent returning, found
Angels at nightfall waiting at their door.
They communed, Israel wrestled with the Lord.
No, not as Abraham's or as Isaac's days,
My sons, have been Jacob your father's days,
Evil and few, attaining not to theirs
In number, and in worth inferior much.