MOSES.
Upon the crests of tents the day-god threw
His rays oblique; blazed, dazzling to the view,
The tracts of gold that on the air he leaves
When in the sands he sets on cloudless eves,
Purple and yellow clothed the desert plain.
High rose the sterile Nebo: climbed with pain
Moses, the man of God, its rugged side—
No soul more meek, less subject unto pride.
One moment had he stopped to cast a look
Upon the vast horizon, Nature's book.
Pisgah at first he saw with fig-trees crowned,
Then, o'er the mountains as they stood around
Gilead, Ephraim, Manasseh,—lands
Fertile to his right, unvexed with sands,
Then to the south Judah far stretching wild
Its deserts, at whose edge the bright sea smiled.
Then further on, with olives graced, a vale,
Naphtali's portion,—pale, already pale
With twilight's shadows, then in flowers and calm,
Jericho slumbering, city of the palm.
Then Phogor's meadows lengthened out with woods
Of mastic-trees, to Segor's solitudes.
He saw all Canaan, all the promised land
He knew he should not enter: stretched his hand
