Page:Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.djvu/48

"The battle his, the conquest he bestows,
"And to our pow'r 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,

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But thou wast deaf to the divine decree;
Young David meets thee, meets thee not in vain;
'Tis thine to perish on th' ensanguin'd plain.

And now the youth the forceful pebble slung,

Philistia trembled as it whizz'd along:

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In his dread forehead, where the helmet ends,
Just o'er the brows the well-aim'd stone descends,
It pierc'd the skull, and shatter'd all the brain,
Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain:

Goliath's fall no smaller terror yields

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Than riving thunders in aerial fields:
The soul still ling'red in its lov'd abode,
Till conq'ring David o'er the giant strode:
Goliath's sword then laid its master dead,

And from the body hew'd the ghastly head;

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