JEPHTHAH
83
CHORUS.
Fair as the dawn is the maiden wise ;
Pale as the poppies by still white water !
Sunlight burns in her pure deep eyes ;
Love lights the tresses of Jephthah’s
daughter.
Kissing rays of the moon have caught her,
Rays of the moon that sleeps and sighs,
JARED [aszde].
In our disgrace, behold! our vengeance
strikes.
I am inspired with so profound a hate—
He shall not triumph: in the very hour
When his o’ermastering forehead tops the
sky
I strike him to the earth. I need not move.
Silence—no more—and all accomplishes.
Leviathan, how subtle is thy path !
CHORUS.
Not now may the hour of gladness fade,
The wheel of our fate spins bright and
beaming.
God has fashioned a sun from shade.
Mercy and joy in one tide are streaming.
Fortune is powerless, to all good seeming.
Fate is stricken, and flees afraid.
JARED.
Bring me the sackcloth and the ashes now !
ELEAZAR,
Behold ! the crown of all our maiden wreath,
Adulah, white and lissome, with the flames
Of dawn forth blushing through her flower-
crowned hair.
CHORUS.
Behold a virgin to the Lord !
Behold a maiden pale as death,
Whose glance is silver as a sword,
And flowers of Kedar fill her breath,
Whose fragrance saturates the sward,
Whose sunny perfume floating saith :
From my ineffable desire is drawn
The awful glory of the golden dawn.
Behold her bosom bare and bold
Whose billows like the ocean swing !
The painted palaces of gold
Where shell-born maidens laugh and sing
Are mirrored in those breasts that hold
Sweet odours of the sunny spring.
Behold the rising swell of perfect calm
In breezy dells adorable of balm !
Behold the tender rosy feet
Made bare for holiness, that move
Like doves amid the waving wheat,
Or swallows silver in the grove
Where sylph and salamander meet,
And gnome and undine swoon for love !
Her feet that flit upon the windy way
Twin fawns, the daughters of the rosy day.
Behold, the arms of her desire
Wave, weave, and wander in the air,
Vines life-endued by subtle fire
So quick and comely, curving bare.
The white diaphanous attire
Floats like a spirit pale and fair.
The dance is woven of the breeze ; the tune
Is like the ocean silvered by the moon.
Behold the maidens following !
O every one is like a flower,
Or like an ewe lamb of the king
That comes from water at the hour
Of even. See, the dancers swing
Their censers ; see, their tresses shower
Descending flames, and perfumes teem divine,
And all the air grows one pale fume of wine.
Their songs, their purity, their peace,
Glide slowly in the arms of God ;
[is lips assume their sanctities,
His eyes perceive the period
Of woven webs of lutes at ease,
And measures by pure maidens trod,
Till, like the smoke of mountains risen at
dawn,
The cloud-veils of the Ain? are withdrawn.
1 The Negative, surrounded by a triple veil
in the Vheogony of the Qabalists, from which
all things spring and to which all shal] return.
see ‘' Berashith ” in a subsequent volume.