HEROD'S LAMENT FOR MARIAMNE. I& Oh! Mariamne! now for thee The heart for which thou bled'st is bleeding; Revenge is lost in agony, And wild remorse to rage succeeding. Oh, Mariamne! where art thou? Thou canst not hear my bitter pleading! Ah, could'st thou thou would'st pardon now, Though heaven were to my prayer unheeding. And is she dead ?and did they dare Obey my phrenzy's jealous raving? My wrath but doomed my own despair: The sword that smote her's o'er me waving. But thou art cold, my murdered love! And this dark heart is vainly craving For her who soars alone above, And leaves my soul unworthy saving. III. She's gone, who shared my diadem : And I have earned those tortures well, Which unconsumed are still consuming! Byron. THE TOO EARLY OPENING FLOWER. Not yet, frail flower! thy charms unclose ; And tempest-clouds and nipping snows. The northern wind may reach thee still, And injure-nay, for ever kill Thy charming white and lovely red. That at the first approach of spring, For March a faithless smile discloses. His shattered hull and shivered sail The sands and brine and foam beneath, That every wave contains a death, 3 That every plunge will be his last. Thou'rt like the courtier, who, elate When greeted first by favour's ray, Begins to make a grand display — But, ah! it is a fickle state. A court is like a garden-shade; The courtiers and the flowers that rise Too suddenly 'neath changeful skies, Oft sink into the dust and fade." In short, we all are like thy flower, And ever, both in weal and woe, With strange perverseness we bestow And verdant summer winter's blight; Then floweret! when thy charms have fled, All withered by a fate unkind, Call wisdom's proverb to thy mind→→→ Soon green, soon gray,—soon ripe, soon dead. Bowring. ON HEARING THAT THE AUSTRIANS HAD ENTERED NAPLES. Aye-down to the dust with them, slaves as they are- On, on, like a cloud, through their beautiful vales, Fill, fill up their wide sunny waters, ye sails, From each slave-mart of Europe, and poison their shore May their fate be a mock-word-may men of all lands And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driven, To think-as the damned haply think of that heaven They had once in their reach-that they might have been free! |