United States or Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Instantly recovering himself, Ranald, in passing, whispered somewhat to one of the females, who, like Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, seemed engaged in watching and mourning the victims of feudal injustice and cruelty. The woman started at his voice, but immediately collected herself and returned for answer a slight inclination of the head.
He was face to face with God alone, in utter weakness, in utter nakedness of soul, He cried to God himself. There was the lesson. God took away from him all things, that he might have no one to cry to but God. God took him up, and cast him down: and there he sat all alone, astonished and confounded, like Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, when she sat alone upon the parching rock.
But the bow string has burst, and the arrow failed. Away with her we will bring her to William with the Beard. By the time he has gorged himself with wassail, as is his wont, he will not know an old Countess from a young one. Away, Rizpah bear a gallant heart. The bright Aldebaran still influences the destinies of the Children of the Desert!"
People who come after us will be more impressed than we are by the Laureate's versatility. He has touched so many strings, from "Will Waterproof's Monologue," so far above Praed, to the agony of "Rizpah," the invincible energy of "Ulysses," the languor and the fairy music of the "Lotus Eaters," the grace as of a Greek epigram which inspires the lines to Catullus and to Virgil.
The days in which Rizpah lived were dark and gloomy days. The words of Samuel to Agag may stand as their memorial, "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women." Let us be thankful that we see no such direful scenes, and let us act worthy of our higher lot.
Rizpah deserved and received the splendid panegyric of Mr Swinburne. The Revenge is probably the finest of the patriotic pieces, and keeps green the memory of an exploit the most marvellous in the annals of English seamen. The Village Wife is a pendant worthy of The Northern Farmer.
To her dewy altars among the mountains of Gilead fled Jephthah's daughter, in the days when she sought for strength to fulfill her father's battle-vow; and into her pitying starry eyes looked stricken Rizpah, from those dreary rocks where love held faithful vigil, guarding the bleaching bones of her darling dead, sacrificed for the sins of Saul. "Mrs.
I have heard them recite in public selections of a kind that no man would dare to undertake such as Tennyson's 'Rizpah, for instance. I know a woman who utters every line of it, with all its questionable allusions, boldly before any and everybody, without so much as an attempt at blushing.
Though we see and hear but one person, we are aware that the talk is shaped to a certain extent by the personality at the other end of the line. In Tennyson's "Rizpah," for example, the characteristics of the well-meaning, Bible-quoting parish visitor determine some of the finest lines in the old mother's response.
Browning said his poetry dealt exclusively with the human soul; and it so happens that four poems of Tennyson's which, intentionally or not, are placed together, deal with four terrific passions. The poems are "The First Quarrel," "Rizpah," "The Northern Cobbler," and "The Revenge." They deal respectively with sex, mother love, drink, and patriotism.
Word Of The Day