No More Learning

Deborah was great; with her singing
She hearten'd the men that the horses had dismayed;
Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, alone
Stood singing where the men were horribly afraid,
Singing of God in the midst of fear;
When archers out of Hazor were
Eating the land like grasshoppers,
And darkness at noon was plundering the air
Of the light of the sun's insulted fires,
Red darkness covering Sisera's host
As Jewry was covered by the Canaanite's boast:
For the earth was broken into dust beneath
The force of his chariots' thundering tyres,
Nine hundred chariots of iron.

Deborah was great in her prophesying;
But, though her anger moved through the Israelites,
And the loose tribes her indignant crying
Bound into song, fashion'd to an army;
And before the measure of her song went flying,
Like leaves and breakage of the woods
Fallen into pouring floods,
The iron and the men of Sisera and Jabin;
Not by her alone
God's punishment was done
On Canaan intending a monstrous crime,
On the foaming and poison of the serpent in Hazor;
Two women were the power of God that time.

Yea, and sullenly down
Into its hiding town,
Even though the lightning were still in its heart,
The broken dragon, drawing in its fury,
Had croucht to mend its shatter'd malice,
Had lifted its head again and spat against God.
But God its endlessly devising brain,
Its braving spirit, its captain Sisera,
Into the hands of another woman brought:
In nets of her persuasion
She that wild spirit caught,
She fasten'd up that uncontrollable thought.
Sisera spake, and the crops were flames;
Sisera lookt, and blood ran down the door-sills.
But weary, trusting his entertainment,
He came to Jael, the Kenite woman;
A woman who gave him death for a bed,
And with base tools nailed down his murderous head
Fast to the earth his rage had fed
With men unreckonably slain.

But than these wonderfully greater,
Judith, art thou;
The praise of both shall follow like a shadow
After thy glory now,
Who alone the measureless striding,
The high ungovern'd brow,
Of Assur upon the hills of the world
Hast tript and sent him hugely sliding,
Like a shot beast, down from his towering,
By his own lamed
Mightiness hurl'd
To lie a filth in disaster.
Deborah and Jael, famously named,
Like rich lands enriching the city their master,
Bring thee now their most golden honour.
For the beauty of thy limbs was found
By a dreadfuller enemy dreadful as the sound
Of Deborah's singing, though hers was a song
That had for its words thousands of men.
But thou thyself, looking upon them,
Didst weaken the Assyrians mortally.
They thought it terrible to see thee coming;
They falter'd in their impiousness,
Their hearts gave in to thee; they went
Backward before thee and shewed thee the tent
Where Holofernes would have thee in to him,
Yea, for his slayer waiting,
Waiting thee to entertain,
Desiring thee, his death, to enjoy, as Jael
Waited for Sisera her slain.

_Judith_.
Have done! Do you think I know not why your souls
Are so delighted round me? Do you think
I see not what it is you praise?
--not me,
But you yourselves triumphing in me and over me.

_A Citizen_.
Did we kill Holofernes?

_Judith_.
No: nor I.
That corpse was not his death. He is alive,
And will be till there is no more a world
Filled with his hidden hunger, waiting for souls
That ford the monstrous waters of the world.
Alive in you is Holofernes now,
But fed and rejoicing; I have filled your hunger.
Yea, and alive in me: my spirit hath been
Enjoyed by the lust of the world, and I am changed
Vilely by the vile thing that clutcht on me,
Like sulphurous smoke eating into silver.
Your song is all of this, this your rejoicing;
You have good right to circle me with song!
You are the world, and you have fed on me.

_A Citizen_.
We are the world; yes, but the world for ever
Honouring thee.

_Judith_.
How am I honoured so,
If I no honour have for the world, but rather
Hold it an odious and traitorous thing,
That means no honour but to those whose spirits
Have yielded to its ancient lechery? --
Defiled, defiled!