"Into these glassy eyes put light;--be still! keep down thine ire! Bid these white lips a blessing speak,--this earth is not my sire: Give me back him for whom I strove,--for whom my blood was shed. Thou canst not?--and a king!--his dust be mountains on thy head!" He loosed the steed,--his slack hand fell; upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place. His hope was crushed, his after fate untold in martial strain: His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain. DAVID INTRODUCTION You will never meet a more interesting character in history than David, the great king of the Israelites, who, it is usually claimed, reigned from about 1055 B.C. to 1015 B.C. Under David the Jews reached the height of their power, and he is regarded as their greatest conqueror. A full biography would be an account of a succession of battles with his enemies the Philistines in which he was always victorious unless, as a punishment for some of the sins his fiery nature led him into, he was temporarily in defeat. Out of the many instances which the Bible gives, we have selected as the most vivid and interesting the accounts of his victory over Goliath, his relations to Saul and Jonathan and the rebellion of his own son Absalom. The story is told as it appears in Hebrew scriptures and is taken from the first and second books of Samuel, but in order to make the story continuous the arrangement of the verses has been changed somewhat. For greater clearness, the scheme of paragraphing has been changed, quotation marks have been used, and other departures made from the old form of printing in bibles. The interesting story is told with all the vivid directness of the Jewish scriptures, and every one must admire the poetic beauty so characteristic of oriental writings. David's compact with Jonathan, his sad lament over the death of his traitorous son, and the grand anthem which he sings in gratitude for his victories, show that the great king was more than a warrior and ruler. In truth, David was as much a poet and musician as he was a warrior and king, for not only did he, by his skill on the harp, quiet the raging fury of Saul's anger, but he wrote, also, the grandest psalms in existence. The _Twenty-third Psalm_ and the _One Hundred Third Psalm_ which, among others, are printed elsewhere in this work, are fine examples of his skill and art. DAVID AND GOLIATH Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle against Israel. And Saul and the men or Israel were gathered together and set the battle in array against the Philistines. And the Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side: and there was a valley between them.