Page:Collected poems vol 1 de la mare.djvu/59

 TILL as a mountain with dark pines and sun He stood between the armies, and his shout Rolled from the empyrean above the host: "Bid any little flea ye have come forth, And wince at death upon my finger-nail!" He turned his large-boned face: and all his steel Tossed into beams the lustre of the noon; And all the shaggy horror of his locks Rustled like locusts in a field of corn. The meagre pupil of his shameless eye Moved like a cormorant over a glassy sea. He stretched his limbs, and laughed into the air, To feel the groaning sinews of his breast, And the long gush of his swollen arteries pause: And, nodding, wheeled, towering in all his height. Then, like a wind that hushes, gazed and saw Down, down, far down upon the untroubled green A shepherd-boy that swung a little sling. Goliath shut his lids to drive that mote, Which vexed the eastern azure of his eye, Out of his vision; and stared down again. Yet stood the youth there, ruddy in the flare Of his vast shield, nor spake, nor quailed, gazed up, As one might scan a mountain to be scaled.