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Watching the steps of Abraham and her child

Along the dewy sides of the far hills,

And praying that her sunny boy faint not.

Would she have watched their path so silently,

If she had known that he was going up,

Even in his fair-haired beauty, to be slain

As a white lamb for sacrifice? They trod

Together onward, patriarch and child;

The bright sun throwing back the old man’s shade,

In straight and fair proportions, as of one

Erect in early vigor. He stood up

Firm in his better strength, and like a tree

Rooted in Lebanon, his frame bent not.

His thin, white hairs had yielded to the wind,

And left his brow uncovered; and his face,

Impressed with the stern majesty of grief,

Nerved to a solemn duty, now stood forth

Like a rent rock, submissive, yet sublime.

But the young boy, he of the laughing eye

And ruby lip, the pride of life was on him.

He seemed to drink the morning. Sun and dew,

And the aroma of the spicy trees,

And all that giveth the delicious East

Its fitness for an Eden, stole like light