"'Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,'"
and calls him by name, "King Saul." Then he waits what may follow, as one at the climax of human endeavor pauses to see what has been accomplished. After a long shudder, the king's self was left
"... standing before me, released and aware."
"(For, awhile there was trouble within me.)"
Then he turns to the dreams he had had in the field. He has gone the rounds of his experience and done his best to interpret them. Now he passes into a higher realm. He describes the great future, and all the different causes working to perpetuate Saul's fame.
"'So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!'"
As he closes, the harp falling forward, he becomes aware
"That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak roots which please To encircle a lamb when it slumbers."
Then Saul lifted up his hand from his side and laid it
"in mild settled will, on my brow: thro' my hair The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind power-- All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower."
and David peered into the eyes of the king--
"'And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?'"
His intense love and longing lifts David into a state of exaltation.
"Then the truth came upon me. No harp more--no song more! outbroke--"
The instrument drops to his side, for inspiration at its highest is expressed by the simplest means. With a heart thrilled by love of this fellow-being, out of that human love David comes to realize something of the divine love, and he breaks into the finest strain of nineteenth century poetry. In noble anapestic lines he pours forth the thought as it comes to him:
"'Behold, I could love if I durst! But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake. What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small, Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal? In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all? Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift? Here, the creature surpass the Creator,--the end, what Began?... Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou--so wilt thou!'"