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Thy name, our charging hosts along,

Shall be the battle-word!
Thy fall, the theme of choral song

From virgin voices pour'd!

To weep would do thy glory wrong: Thou shalt not be deplored.

SAUL.

THOU whose spell can raise the dead,
Bid the prophet's form appear.
'Samuel, raise thy buried head!

King, behold the phantom seer!'

Earth yawn'd; he stood the centre of a cloud:
Light changed its hue, retiring from his shroud.
Death stood all glassy in his fixed eye;
His hand was wither'd, and his veins were dry;
His foot, in bony whiteness, glitter'd there,
Shrunken and sinewless, and ghastly bare;
From lips that moved not and unbreathing frame,
Like cavern'd winds, the hollow accents came.
Saul saw, and fell to earth, as falls the oak,
At once, and blasted by the thunder-stroke.

Why is my sleep disquieted? Who is he that calls the dead? Is it thou, O King? Behold, Bloodless are these limbs, and cold; Such are mine; and such shall be Thine to-morrow, when with me: Ere the coming day is done, Such shalt thou be, such thy son. Fare thee well, but for a day, Then we mix our mouldering clay. Thou, thy race, lie pale and low, Pierced by shafts of many a bow; And the falchion by thy side To thy heart thy hand shall guide: Crownless, breathless, headless fall, Son and sire, the house of Saul !'

SONG OF SAUL BEFORE HIS LAST
BATTLE.

WARRIORS and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword
Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord,
Heed not the corse, though a king's, in your path:
Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath!

Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow,
Should the soldiers of Saul look away from the foe,
Stretch me that moment in blood at thy feet!
Mine be the doom which they dared not to meet.

Farewell to others, but never we part,
Heir to my royalty, son of my heart!

Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway,
Or kingly the death, which awaits us to-day.

ALL IS VANITY, SAITH THE PREACHER.'

FAME, wisdom, love, and power were mine,
And health and youth possess'd me;

My goblets blush'd from every vine,
And lovely forms caress'd me:
I sunn'd my heart in beauty's eyes,
And felt my soul grow tender;
All earth can give, or mortal prize,
Was mine of regal splendour.

I strive to number o'er what days
Remembrance can discover,
Which all that life or earth displays
Would lure me to live over.
There rose no day, there roll'd no hour
Of pleasure unembitter'd;

And not a trapping deck'd my power
That gall'd not while it glitter'd.

The serpent of the field, by art

And spells, is won from harmning; But that which coils around the heart, Oh! who hath power of charming? It will not list to wisdom's lore, Nor music's voice can lure it; But there it stings for evermore The soul that must endure it.

WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY.

WHEN coldness wraps this suffering clay. Ah! whither strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay,

But leaves its darken'd dust behind. Then, unenibodied, doth it trace

By steps each planet's heavenly way? Or fill at once the realms of space, A thing of eyes, that all survey?

Eternal, boundless, undecay'd,

A thought unseen, but seeing all,
All, all in earth or skies display'd,
Shall it survey, shall it recall:
Each fainter trace that memory holds
So darkly of departed years,
In one broad glance the soul beholds,
And all that was at once appears.

Before Creation peopled earth,

Its eye shall roll through chaos back; And where the furthest heaven had birth, The spirit trace its rising track. And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, While sun is quench'd, or system breaks, Fix'd in its own eternity.

Above or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years as moments shall endure.
Away, away, without a wing,

O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly,
A nameless and eternal thing,
Forgetting what it was to die.

VISION OF BELSHAZZAR.

THE King was on his throne,
The Satraps throng'd the hall :
A thousand bright lamps shone
O'er that high festival.
A thousand cups of gold,
In Judah deem'd divine-
Jehovah's vessels hold

The godless Heathen's wine.
In that same hour and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,
And wrote as if on sand:
The fingers of a man ;-
A solitary hand
Along the letters ran,

And traced them like a wand.

The monarch saw, and shook,
And bade no more rejoice;
All bloodless wax'd his look,
And tremulous his voice.
'Let the men of lore appear,

The wisest of the earth,

And expound the words of fear, Which mar our royal mirth.'

Chaldea's seers are good,

But here they have no skill; And the unknown letters stood Untold and awful still. And Babel's men of age

Are wise and deep in lore But now they were not sage, They saw-but knew no more.

A captive in the land,

A stranger and a youth, He heard the king's command, He saw that writing's truth. The lamps around were bright, The prophecy in view; He read it on that night,

The morrow proved it true. 'Belshazzar's grave is made, His kingdom pass'd away, He, in the balance weigh'd,

Is light and worthless clay; The shroud his robe of state,

His canopy the stone; The Mede is at his gate!

The Persian on his throne

SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS!

SUN of the sleepless! melancholy star!
Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,
That show'st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
How like art thou to joy remember'd well!
So gleams the past, the light of other days,

Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
Distinct, but distant-clear, but oh, how cold!

WERE MY BOSOM AS FALSE AS THOU DEEM'ST IT TO BE.

WERE my bosom as false as thou deem'st it to be, I need not have wandered from far Galilee;

It was but abjuring my creed to efface

The curse which, thou say'st, is the crime of my race.

If the bad never triumph, then God is with thee!
If the slave only sin, thou art spotless and free!
If the exile on earth is an outcast on high,
Live on in thy faith, but in mine I will die.

I have lost for that faith more than thou canst bestow,
As the God who permits thee to prosper doth know;
In His hand is my heart and my hope-and in thine
The land and the life which for Him I resign.

HEROD'S LAMENT FOR MARIAMNE. 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! couldst thou-thou wouldst pardon now, Though Heaven were to my prayer unheeding.

And is she dead?-and did they dare

Obey my frenzy's jealous raving?
My wrath but doom'd my own despair:

The sword that smote her 's o'er me waving.
But thou art cold, my murder'd love !
And this dark heart is vainly craving
For her who soars alone above,

And leaves my soul unworthy saving.

She's gone, who shared my diadem;

She sunk, with her my joys entombing;
I swept that flower from Judah's stem,
Whose leaves for me alone were blooming;
And mine's the guilt, and mine the hell,
This bosom's desolation dooming;
And I have earn'd those tortures well,
Which unconsumed are still consuming!

ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF
JERUSALEM BY TITUS.

FROM the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome,
I beheld thee, O Sion, when render'd to Rome:
Twas thy last sun went down, and the flames of thy
fall

Flash'd back on the last glance I gave to thy wall.

I look'd for thy temple, I look'd for my home,
And forgot for a moment my bondage to come;
I beheld but the death-fire that fed on thy fane,
And the fast-fetter'd hands that made vengeance in
vain.

On many an eve, the high spot whence I gazed Had reflected the last beam of day as it blazed;

While I stood on the height, and beheld the decline Of the rays from the mountain that shone on thy shrine.

And now on that mountain I stood on that day,
But I mark'd not the twilight beam melting away!

Oh! would that the lightning had glared in its stead,
And the thunderbolt burst on the conqueror's head!
But the gods of the Pagan shall never profane
The shrine where Jehovah disdain'd not to reign;
And scatter'd and scorn'd as Thy people may be,
Our worship, O Father is only for Thee.

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT
DOWN AND WEPT.

We sat down and wept by the waters
Of Babel, and thought of the day
When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters!
Made Salem's high places his prey;
And ye, O her desolate daughters !
Were scatter'd all weeping away.
While sadly we gazed on the river

Which roll'd on in freedom below,
They demanded the song, but, oh, never
That triumph the stranger shall know!
May this right hand be wither'd for ever,
Ere it string our high harp for the foe!
On the willow that harp is suspended,
O Salem! its sound should be free;
And the hour when thy glories were ended
But left me that token of thee:
And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended
With the voice of the spoiler by me!

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the

sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath
blown,

That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strewn.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew
still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

A SPIRIT PASSED BEFORE ME.
FROM JOB.

A SPIRIT pass'd before me: I beheld
The face of immortality unveil'd-
Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine-
And there it stood-all formless, but divine:
Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake;
And as my damp hair stiffen'd, thus it spake:

'Is man more just than God? Is man more pure Than He who deems even Seraphs insecure? Creatures of clay-vain dwellers in the dust! The moth survives you, and are ye more just ? Things of a day! you wither ere the night, Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!'

POEMS ON NAPOLEON.

ODE TO NAPOLEON.

'Expende Annibalem :-quot libras in duce_sunimo Invenies? JUVENAL, Sat. x.

'The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate, by the Italians, and by the Provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues and military talents were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced in prophetic strains the restoration of public felicity. By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years, in a very ambiguous state, between an Emperor and an Exile, till--GIBBON'S Decline and Fall. vol. vi. p. 220.

'TIS done-but yesterday a King!
And arm'd with Kings to strive-
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject-yet alive!

*

Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones;
And can he thus survive?

Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.

Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind
Who bow'd so low the knee?
By gazing on thyself grown blind,
Thou taught'st the rest to see.

With might unquestion'd.-power to save,-
Thine only gift hath been the grave,

To those that worshipp'd thee; Nor till thy fall could mortals guess Ambition's less than littleness!

Thanks for that lesson--it will teach

To after-warriors more

Than high Philosophy can preach,
And vainly preach'd before.
That spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again,

That led them to adore
Those Pagod things of sabre sway,
With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.

The triumph, and the vanity,
The rapture of the strife*-
The earthquake voice of Victory,
To thee the breath of life;

The sword, the sceptre, and that sway
Which man seem'd made but to obey,
Wherewith renown was rife-

All quell'd-Dark Spirit! what must be
The madness of thy memory!

Certaminis gaudia-the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus.

The Desolator desolate!
The Victor overthrown!
The Arbiter of others' fate

A Suppliant for his own!
Is it some yet imperial hope
That with such change can calmly cope?
Or dread of death alone?

To die a prince-or live a slave-
Thy choice is most ignobly brave!

He who of old would rend the oak,*
Dream'd not of the rebound;
Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke-
Alone-how look'd he round!
Thou, in the sternness of thy strength,
An equal deed hast done at length,

And darker fate hast found:

He fell, the forest prowlers' prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!

The Roman,t when his burning heart
Was slaked with blood of Rome,
Threw down the dagger-dared depart,
In savage grandeur, home:
He dared depart, in utter scorn
Of men that such a yoke had borne,
Yet left him such a doom!

His only glory was that hour
Of self-upheld abandon'd power.

The Spaniard, when the lust of sway,
Had lost its quickening spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,

An empire for a cell;

A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:

Yet better had he neither known
A bigot's shrine, nor despot's throne.

But thou-from thy reluctant hand

The thunderbolt is wrungToo late thou leav'st the high command To which thy weakness clung;

All Evil Spirit as thou art,

It is enough to grieve the heart

To see thine own unstrung;

To think that God's fair world hath been

The footstool of a thing so mean!

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And Earth hath spilt her blood for him,
Who thus can hoard his own!
And Monarchs bow'd the trembling limb,
And thank'd him for a throne!
Fair Freedom! we may hold thee dear,
When thus thy mightiest foes their fear
In humblest guise have shown.
Oh! ne'er may tyrant leave behind
A brighter name to lure mankind!

Thine evil deeds are writ in gore,

Nor written thus in vain-
Thy triumphs tell of fame no more,
Or deepen every stain:

If thou hadst died as honour dies,
Some new Napoleon might arise,
To shame the world again-
But who would soar the solar height,
To set in such a starless night?

Weigh'd in the balance, hero dust
Is vile as vulgar clay;
Thy scales, Mortality! are just
To all that pass away:
But yet methought the living great
Some higher sparks should animate,

To dazzle and dismay:

Nor deem'd Contempt could thus make mirth Of these, the Conquerors of the earth.

And she, proud Austria's mournful flower,* Thy still imperial bride,

How bears her breast the torturing hour? Still clings she to thy side?

Must she, too, bend: must she, too, share, Thy late repentance, long despair,

Thou throneless Homicide?

If still she loves thee, hoard that gem,-
'Tis worth thy vanish'd diadem!

Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle,
And gaze upon the sea;
That element may meet thy smile-
It ne'er was ruled by thee!
Or trace with thine all idle hand,
In loitering mood upon the sand,
That Earth is now as free!
That Corinth's pedagoguet hath now
Transferr'd his byword to thy brow.

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WE do not curse thee, Waterloo!
Though Freedom's blood thy plain bedew :
There 'twas shed, but is not sunk-
Rising from each gory trunk,
Like the waterspout from ocean,
With a strong and growing motion:
It soars and mingles in the air,
With that of lost Labedoyère-
With that of him whose honour'd grave
Contains the bravest of the brave.'
A crimson cloud it spreads and glows,
But shall return to whence it rose ;
When 'tis full 'twill burst asunder-
Never yet was heard such thunder

As then shall shake the world with wonder-
Never yet was seen such lightning

As o'er heaven shall then be bright'ning!

* Prometheus, said to have stolen fire from heaven. D

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