With the death of Absalom the rebellion was at an end; but David’s heart was broken.  He waited at the gate of the city, more interested in the welfare of his son than in the success of his army.  Swift runners approach!  In answer to his question, “Is the young man safe?” he hears reply that pierces his heart like a dagger.  Up to his chamber over the gate the king slowly passed weeping and bent with grief, and as he went he said, “O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom!  Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

A poet’s conception of David’s great grief on hearing of the death of his son is portrayed in the following lines of N. P. Willis: 

    Alas! my noble boy! that thou shouldst die! 
      Thou, who wert made so beautifully fair! 
    That Death should settle in thy glorious eye,
      And leave his stillness in thy clustering hair! 
    How could he mark thee for the silent tomb? 
      My proud boy, Absalom!

    Cold is thy brow, my son! and I am chill,
      As to my bosom I have tried to press thee
    How was I wont to feel my pulses thrill,

      Like a rich harp-string, yearning to caress thee,
    And hear thy sweet “My father!” from these dumb
      And cold lips, Absalom!

    But death is on thee.  I shall hear the gush
      Of music, and the voices of the young;
    And life will pass me in the mantling blush,
      And the dark tresses to the soft winds flung;
    But thou no more, with thy sweet voice, shalt come
      To meet me, Absalom!

    And oh! when I am stricken, and my heart,
      Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken. 
    How will its love for thee, as I depart,
      Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token! 
    It were so sweet, amid death’s gathering gloom,
      To see thee, Absalom!

    And now, farewell!  ’Tis hard to give thee up
      With death so like a gentle slumber on thee—­
    And thy dark sin!  Oh!  I could drink the cup,
      If from this woe its bitterness had won thee. 
    May God have called thee, like a wanderer, home,
      My lost boy, Absalom!

But this fountain!  What birds and beasts here drank undisturbed before man came to assert his lordship!  What multitudes of people here have drunk from the days before Israel down to the present time—­the hunter, the tiller of the soil, the grape-gatherer, the shepherd with his flocks, the warrior and his chief,—­all rejoiced and rested here, and were refreshed and strengthened by the water.

Almost with reverence we drink again; then we remount our horses and proceed along the wady past the village of Ajlun where an Arab joins us and guides us on over fertile patches of ground and through olive groves until we reach the modern town of Coefrinje, a town that probably contains several thousand inhabitants.  It is in the midst of an olive grove well up on the side of the mountains.  Here, although it is scarcely past the middle of the afternoon, we stop for the night.  It is too far to the next village to risk going ahead—­the way is none too safe, even by day.