And this of the satisfied lust of blood, uttered by a Hebrew soldier, after the slaughter:—
"When I was killing, such thoughts came to me, like
The sound of cleft-dropped waters to the ear
Of the hot mower, who thereat stops the oftener
To whet his glittering scythe, and, while he smiles,
With the harsh, sharpening hone beats their fall's time,
And dancing to it in his heart's straight chamber,
Forgets that he is weary."
After the execution of Agag by the hand of Samuel, the demons are introduced with more propriety than in the opening of the poem. The following passage has a subtle, sombre grandeur of its own:—
"First Demon. Now let us down to hell: we've seen the last.
"Second Demon. Stay; for the road thereto is yet incumbered
With the descending spectres of the killed.
'Tis said they choke hell's gates, and stretch from thence
Out like a tongue upon the silent gulf;
Wherein our spirits—even as terrestrial ships
That are detained by foul winds in an offing—
Linger perforce, and feel broad gusts of sighs
That swing them on the dark and billowless waste,
O'er which come sounds more dismal than the boom,
At midnight, of the salt flood's foaming surf,—
Even dead Amalek's moan and lamentation."
The reader will detect the rhythmical faults of the poem, even in these passages. But there is a vast difference between such blemishes of the unrhymed heroic measure as terminating a line with "and," "of," or "but," or inattention to the cæsural pauses, and that mathematical precision of foot and accent, which, after all, can scarcely be distinguished from prose. Whatever may be his shortcomings, Mr. Heavysege speaks in the dialect of poetry. Only rarely he drops into bald prose, as in these lines:—
"But let us go abroad, and in the twilight's
Cool, tranquillizing air discuss this matter."
We remember, however, that Wordsworth wrote,—
"A band of officers
Then stationed in the city were among the chief
Of my associates."
We had marked many other fine passages of "Saul" for quotation, but must be content with a few of those which are most readily separated from the context.