Hannah Gould - Mother's Dream and Other Poems

At his dread shock of nature, the lamb from its play,
The bee and the bird, in affright fled away;
The branch, flower, and grass, felt the crush and the scath,
And the winds passing by, snuffed the heat of his wrath.

With blood, that, in torrents, he poured down like rain,
He drenched the green turf, that he strewed with the slain,
Till the eminence groaned with the carnage it bore,
And its heart heaved and shuddered at drinking the gore.

While the breath of the war-spirit scented the air,
The rivers looked wild in reflecting his glare;
And ocean’s cold bosom was torn, as he gave
The flap of his pinion to trouble its wave.

The village besieged, wrapped in flames from his breath,
Looked up to the hill, where he revelled with death,
And swelled with the essence of life he had shed,
To sweeten their cup, and the banquet to spread.

O War-spirit! War-spirit, when didst thou bring
Such trophies of beauty before the pale king,
Since walking on Gilboa’s height, in thy power,
Of Israel’s valiant to mow down the flower?

Mourn, wail, O ye people! and spread wide the pall,
Whose deep sable fringe down the hill-sides shall fall!
Your brethren’s warm blood cries aloud from the ground,
That hosts, like Philistia’s, in triumph surround.

The lovely, the pleasant have perished! Alas!
Where they fell may there hence be no dew on the grass!
Let a monument there, towards the heavens rear its head,
From a base, that shall cover the spot where they bled!

Ah, War-spirit! War-spirit, deep was the gloom,
Though heaven was unclouded, and earth all in bloom,
When thou, at the onset, that young summer’s day,
Didst strike so much valor to darkness away!

And yet, by that thunder, the land is awake:
’T was the crack of her yoke when beginning to break!
And out of that gloom is her glory to spread;