Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THOU MOON AND O YE STARS, FR. JUDITH, by THOMAS STURGE MOORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THOU MOON AND O YE STARS, FR. JUDITH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thou moon and o ye stars, ye hosts of light!
Last Line: [she returns into the tent and draws the curtain.]
Alternate Author Name(s): Moore, T. Sturge
Subject(s): Judith (bible); Women In The Bible


JUDITH [steps forward, and looking up, speaks]:
THOU moon and O ye stars, ye hosts of light!
Terrible is your beauty unto me.
-- What am I?
And what am I to do?
-- Now is the time to help me;
Thou hast seen me, O Lord God;
He did not touch me to defile me, and he sleeps:
Thou puttedst this deed in my heart to do,
For all up at Bethulia did prepare..
Being starved and thirsty..did prepare their hearts
To anger Thee and eat forbidden things;
And they had opened the town gates ere long,
And given all Thy land unto thy foe,
Unto this drunken beast.
-- Alas, I am alone,
Alone, in this huge night.
Ah, what am I to do?
The most that can be done, the best, is like
A single point of light, a lonely star;
Yea, this deed which so cries on me to do it
Will be for clearness but one fevered lamp;
And all my life obscure and all the lives
Of those I live among, quite lustreless;
Darkness in which this throbbing act of blood
Demands to shine. -- O God, it is Thy will,
That didst create the evil and the good.
Pour Thou thy strength into my weakness now;
Pierce Thou my life's obscurity at once!
Now is the time to help me, now at once..
For all around me sleep thine enemies.
[A silence while she looks round as though recollecting the presence of the camp, then
HOLOFERNES moans and, lifting the curtain, she half stoops over him as over a sleeping child
and croons soothingly.]
With limbs that ache
Full many lie awake;
With pangs as they were breaking
The jealous hearts lie waking:
Deep is the dream of mutual sleep
And kind as deep.
[When he snores once more she stretches over him and unhooks his faulchion from the tent pole
and, carrying it in its sheath, comes forward out of the tent.]
Oh, I have never killed a man before!
No, never even butchered goat or sheep...
I have taken down his faulchion,
And now must make it bare.
[She prepares to draw the blade.]
To have stripped off my clothes before that man,
Whom wine had heated and whose god is vile,
Could not have caused more terror to my soul
Than now, before my hard unshrinking purpose,
To bare this blade.
[She draws the faulchion.]
O Cruelty,
Ravish not thou my heart!
[She lowers it and holds it behind her.]
I have been praised for loving-tenderness:
It was like sunshine to me when a child
Or a poor beggar knew my heart was kind,
Although before he had no knowledge of me...
Oh, this is vain as girls are vain for beauty!
It must be done.
[She raises the blade and looks at it.]
His hair must be put by and his thick beard;
Swords will not cut them through, I've heard it said.
Shall I have strength to carve right through his bone?
[She holds it up in her hands and prays.]
Be present with me now!
For the exaltation of Thy people aid me now,
Approver of the Righteous Will, that livest
Even in a woman's heart!
[She returns into the tent and draws the curtain.]





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