Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SERVANT OF THE PROPHET, by ABBIE HUSTON EVANS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SERVANT OF THE PROPHET, by                    
First Line: I never read the story but I wonder
Last Line: "yet sometimes, in broad daylight, -- ""what was that!"
Subject(s): Household Employees; Servants; Domestics; Maids


I never read the story but I wonder
About that young man in the Book of Kings,
The servant of the prophet, who is nameless.
-- You know the story: how the host of Syria
Compassed the city in the dead of night,
And how the young man cried, -- "Alas, my master,
How shall we do?" -- "Open his eyes, Lord!" cried
The man of God.
"And lo, the side of the mountain
Was full of horses and chariots of fire
About Elisha."
-- What had dropped away?
Did other things look different as the hill?
And did he, I have wondered, ever after,
Look with a beating heart on a bare field,
Remembering what an empty ridge had held?

I ought to know: for I myself have seen
The flaming chariots blazing through the pine
And scrub oak; not in chariot form, perhaps,
Because it wasn't chariots that I needed
To save me at the time; but I have seen
For an instant, reinforcement, just at hand!
And then the scrub oak shutting in again,
And the hot sunshine beating on the pine.

Yet, ten to one, the young man did forget,
Or like as not explained it all away;
Yet sometimes, in broad daylight, -- "What was that!"





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