Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/65

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Hagar and Ishmael.
The promised seed is born,—no Ishmael nowWill share a father's smiles with Sarah's child;And Hagar with her son must wander farAcross the dreary solitary wild.Ere she departs one proud disdainful glanceShe throws on all around; yet in her eyeThe tear-drop gathers, as she sees her childUp to his father's face gaze wistfully.No angry, galling word to him she speaks,But bends her o'er the silent wond'ring boy,While the big tears that trickle down her cheeksTell of a mother's inward agony.
Moses in the Bulrushes.
Beside the river's brink, Where tall the rushes grew,She gently laid him down, And, weeping, then withdrewTo some secluded spot, Where she intent could viewWhat there might him befall, What danger might accrue.
But long she did not wait, For she at length espiedKing Pharaoh's daughter come Down by the river's sideTo bathe, as custom was With that illustrious fair,And from pollution cleanse Her form so noble, there.
When to the place she came, The ark it caught her eye,She to her servants said, "See yonder what doth lieAfloat upon the wave, Where those tall rushes are?—Some dark, mysterious thing Lies hidden surely there.
My maidens, haste and see What this strange thing can mean."Her servants heard and went, And to the ark they came,
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