Henry Livingston

Apostrophe

From morn to eve from eve to rosy morn,
On this bleak rock I’ll lay me all forlorn;
Here will I stay, tho’ tempests frown around,
Fierce lightnings glare, or earthquakes rock the ground.
The prowling wolves, the hungry birds of prey,
Pierc’d with my moans, will rove another way:
Less steel’d than man, with hearts dissolv’d they go,
And lose their nature at the voice of woe.
And did ye, O my hapless offspring! bleed
For your unhappy father’s thoughtless deed?
He fell, alas! on Gilboa’s fatal plain,
And gave his life ’mong thousands nobly slain.
--He had his faults; but he was kind and brave,
And with him all his errors found a grave;
-- Thus fondly I
With cursed, deadly hate
Against his house are hurl’d the bolts of state;
For royal David, wrapt in purple-grieves
While one of Saul’s unfort’nate lineage lives:
His word is fate -- myself, my children all,
Must in an undistinguish’d ruin fall.