On Viewing a Statue of David

THIS was the shepherd boy who slung the stone

And killed the giant; sunshine and the wind

Had given his harp so clear and strange a tone

That all the world forgave him when he sinned.

The gently formed and stately Greek who stood

On the Piazza, throned in classic pride,

Was not the boy who roamed through field and wood,

Fighting and singing on the bright hillside.

Swift on the mountains, swift to save or slay;

Eager and passionate and lithe of form;

Fighting and singing, pausing but to pray,

Unto his God of music and of storm.

The bare hillside and sharp rocks castellate

Rang with the clanging of his bow;

Where in the dawn of the world’s love and hate,

He found and would not slay his sleeping foe.

No sorrowful shades of the evil years

Falls in the boy’s face of the wood and wild;

Vanished are rags and lust and passionate tears;

The King is dead, immortal stands the child.