In Learning's halls he walked--a leading lord,
He trod the sacred temple's inner floors;
But kindness beamed in every look and word
He gave the humblest Levite at the doors.

When scholars poor and bowed beneath the ban,
Which clings as fire, were like to faint and fall,
This was the gentle, good Samaritan,
Who stopped and held a helping hand to all.

No term that savoured of unfriendliness,
No censure through those pure lips ever passed;
He saw the erring spirit's keen distress,
And hoped for it, long-suffering to the last.

Moreover, in these days when Faith grows faint,
And Heaven seems blurred by speculation wild,
He, blameless as a mediaeval saint,
Had all the trust which sanctifies a child.

But now he sleeps, and as the years go by,
We'll often pause above his sacred dust,
And think how grand a thing it is to die
The noble death which deifies the just.

Rizpah

Said one who led the spears of swarthy Gad,
To Jesse's mighty son: "My Lord, O King,
I, halting hard by Gibeon's bleak-blown hill
Three nightfalls past, saw dark-eyed Rizpah, clad
In dripping sackcloth, pace with naked feet
The flinty rock where lie unburied yet
The sons of her and Saul; and he whose post
Of watch is in those places desolate,
Got up, and spake unto thy servant here
Concerning her--yea, even unto me:--
'Behold,' he said, 'the woman seeks not rest,
Nor fire, nor food, nor roof, nor any haunt
Where sojourns man; but rather on yon rock
Abideth, like a wild thing, with the slain,
And watcheth them, lest evil wing or paw
Should light upon the comely faces dead,
To spoil them of their beauty. Three long moons
Hath Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, dwelt
With drouth and cold and rain and wind by turns,
And many birds there are that know her face,
And many beasts that flee not at her step,
And many cunning eyes do look at her
From serpent-holes and burrows of the rat.
Moreover,' spake the scout, 'her skin is brown
And sere by reason of exceeding heat;
And all her darkness of abundant hair
Is shot with gray, because of many nights
When grief hath crouched in fellowship with frost
Upon that desert rock. Yea, thus and thus
Fares Rizpah,' said the spy, O King, to me."

But David, son of Jesse, spake no word,
But turned himself, and wept against the wall.