Saul by Robert Browning — Read

I

Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak, / Kiss my cheek, wish me well! " Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek. / And he: "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent, / Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent / Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet, / Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet. / For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days, / Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise, / To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife, / And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life.