Tidings! sad tidings for the daughter of Ai,
They are bearing her prince and loved away,
Destruction falls like a mournful pall
On the fallen house of ill-fated Saul.
And Rizpah hears that her loved must die,
But she hears it all with a tearless eye;
And clasping her hand with grief and dread
She meekly bows her queenly head.
The blood has left her blanching cheek,
Her quivering lips refuse to speak,
Oh! grief like hers has learned no tone—
A world of grief is all its own.
But the dead is done, and the hand is stay'd
That havoc among the brethren made,
And Rizpah takes her lowly seat
To watch the princely dead at her feet.
The jackall crept out with a stealthy tread,
To batten and feast on the noble dead;
The vulture bore down with a heavy wing
To dip his beak in life's stagnant spring.
The hyena heard the jackall's howl,
And he bounded forth with a sullen growl,
When Rizpah's shriek rose on the air
Like a tone from the caverns of despair.
She sprang from her sad and lowly seat,
For a moment her heart forgot to beat,
And the blood rushes up to her marble cheek
And a flash to her eye so sad and meek.
The vulture paused in his downward flight,
As she raised her form to its queenly height,
The hyena's eye had a horrid glare
As he turned again to his desert lair.
The jackall slunk back with a quickened tread,
From his cowardly search of Rizpah's dead;
Unsated he turned from the noble prey,
Subdued by the glance of the daughter of Ai.
Of grief! that a mother's heart should know,
Such a weary weight of consuming wo,
For seldom if ever earth has known
Such love as the daughter of Ai hath known
Rizpah, the Daughter of Ai
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825-1911
Graphic - Yuqi Wang (B.1958)
