Page:Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave.djvu/70

64 "That all the earth's inhabitants may know

"That there's a God who governs all below:

"This great assembly, too, shall witness stand,

"That needs not sword nor spear, the Almighty's hand:

"The battle his, the conquest he bestows,

"And to our power consigns our hated foes."

Thus David spoke. Goliath heard, and came

To meet the hero in the field of fame.

Ah! fatal meeting to thy troops and thee;

But thou wast deaf to the divine decree:

Young David meets thee, meets thee not in vain;

'T is thine to perish on the ensanguined plain.

And now the youth the forceful pebble flung;

Philistia trembled as it whizzed along.

In his dread forehead, where the helmet ends,

Just o'er the brows the well-aimed stone descends;

It pierced the skull, and shattered all the brain—

Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain.

Goliath's fall no smaller terror yields,

Than riving thunders in aerial fields:

The soul still lingered in its loved abode,

Till conquering David o'er the giant strode:

Goliath's sword then laid its roaster dead,

And from the body hewed the ghastly head;

The blood in gushing torrents drenched the plains,

The soul found passage through the spouting veins.

And now aloud the illustrious victor said,

"Where are your boastings, now your champion's dead?"

Scarce had he spoke, when the Philistines fled;