And Jonathan too had honour in his heart,
Jonathan who with an armour-bearer went
Alone by Michmash to the Philistines,
And met a spray of swords because of courage
That made him single greater than a host.
Jonathan too had known his battles, dared
At any hour the coming of death, because
In twilight silence he had walked with God,
Read Him in blossoms and the mountain brooks,
And learnt that death, well known, can alter nothing.
He was a brown man, burnt with love of summer,
His young beard curled, and russet as the eyes
That looked on life, and feared it, yet were master,
Because they knew the tyranny they feared,
Measured it, learnt it, gazed it into nothing.
....
And now he watched the boy, the son of Jesse,
David with hair like maples in October,
And skin that women loving coveted,
David with eyes that often by the sheepfolds
Had looked through leaves up to the folds of heaven,
And seeing them crammed with golden fleece of stars,
Had known how the blood can run because of beauty.
Jonathan watched him take the armour off
Given by Saul, and choose the bright smooth pebbles,
And walk out from the Israelitish throng
Into the field against the Philistine giant.
Watching, he snatched his sword and cried to Saul,
"Bid him come back. This murder must not be."
And as he spoke, he knew the words were treason,
His heart alone in all the world was sure
That David was the Lord's appointed arm,
To meet this bulk of dirt, this giant fear
Brandishing out of the loathly camps of evil.
And before Saul could answer, he put down
The sword, and said, "I love him. Let him go."
....
But the words, I love him, were not for his father Saul,
Hardly Jonathan knowing he spake them out.
But as he looked on David love was there,
Waking from that in David that he himself
A little was, and always greatly shaping
Himself towards, so that his name was spoken
Famously in Saul's kingdom. It was courage,
The clean heart, undivided in its doing,
The purpose that, being bodied in the brain,
Thenceforth knew every trickling argument
That fell from tongues of persuading circumstance,
As lures of evil ever threatening life,
That Jonathan loved above all enterprise.
He knew, or the rarer man within him knew,
That once your yea in holy meditation
Had shaped itself in the perfect syllable,
Thenceforth no nay from any other tongue
Or wise or passionate or masterful,
Could be listened to without the shame of sin
Corrupting all your constancy for ever.
He knew the curse of good betraying good,
Till both in bleak irresolution fall.
And all his years was Jonathan's anguish only
To keep this tillage of his wisdom clean.
.....
Since boyhood he had known Philistia
For the black thing it was, a plague opposed
Always against the loveliness of Israel,
And when his father Saul was anointed king
By Samuel in Ramah, then Jonathan knew
How all the lessons of his youth had been
To fit him for the striking of the men
Who profaned beauty and let the soul be blind.
And he was diligent in bronze and arms,
And kept his body supple, and his eye
Keen, and the coming of his hooves was thunder,
Wherever battle fell. He bore a flame,
Zealous and pure, in the heavens of his mind,
To serve and to instruct. Aye, to instruct—
There was the biting blemish, as we shall see.
.....
Philistia was foul, and Jonathan knew,
And the voice of God within him was plain and constant
To strike and strike unwearying to the end.
And then the poor, precise, infirmity
That loads good minds with ever seeming virtue,
Until they cast their treasure to the dust,
Crept on him, wound about the gleaming truth
That was his one foundation. Day by day
He was resolved, and then the grain of doubt
Would come to hurt the riding of his thought,
And break the level balance that it had.
Was then the Philistine mere black? That day
Jonathan's arm half paused upon the blow,
And evil went a little scatheless off.
Surely the worst even of adversaries
Had somewhere beams that pointed to salvation,
And hasty judgment might not be the will
Of an all-seeing Lord? Then would the vengeance
Falter, and stay, and Jonathan's battle failed.
And always then was bitterness and reproach
In the night watches when upon his couch
He looked on the stars studding his little window
Before sleep came. Then he would speak again
The word that single was his valiance,
His only truth, his warrant as a man,
And once again Philistia was doomed.
Then for a season clean the stroke and sure
That Jonathan drove, and black was known for black,
Till slowly as before would mount and mount
Scruple on scruple, as was not he himself
A little black sometimes, or plainly wicked?
And should the wicked man not be redeemed?
Merely destruction surely was no answer,
Since yet the wickedness must wander somewhere?
How should he say, I, Jonathan of Israel
Am good, and you the Philistine are cursed,
Since in that face was something that had been
Learnt from the buds and corn and frozen hills
That he himself had known for seals of God?
And would not his power on Israel increase,
Take on a loftier authority,
If to his famous arms he could add a tale
Of counsel working in the hearts of men,
Moving them to a finer charity,
A little pity for offence? And so
Instruction like a worm was at his roots,
And pride of virtue made Jonathan forget.
Then sometimes as he knew himself betrayed
He would cry upon his spirit in the night—
I, Jonathan, who know
The processes of God
Moving within me,
Turn aside to my idols of desire.
He has taught me the ways
Of Philistine cruelty. He
Shows me the bad man toiling to the ruin
Of beauty and the free spirit on earth,
And has equipped me for the establishment
Of His will in this battle, and I fail.
I am a leaf spinning about the wind,
Who have been shown the ways of stedfastness.
O Israel, I have heard
My dedication made
To your sweet service by the voice of Him,
And I betray
That wisdom, that great simpleness of wisdom,
Inventing in my brain
Fantastic argument
As though God's mind
Had missed the brighter pools
That I alone could visit and gaze into.
He tells me, and I hear
Voices not His.
Knowing, I question. And I am ashamed.