Thy name, our charging hosts along, Shall be the battle-word! 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, King, behold the phantom seer!' Earth yawn'd; he stood the centre of a cloud: 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 WARRIORS and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow, Farewell to others, but never we part, Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway, ALL IS VANITY, SAITH THE PREACHER.' FAME, wisdom, love, and power were mine, My goblets blush'd from every vine, I strive to number o'er what days And not a trapping deck'd my power 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, 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, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly, VISION OF BELSHAZZAR. THE King was on his throne, The godless Heathen's wine. And traced them like a wand. The monarch saw, and shook, 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! Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays; 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! I have lost for that faith more than thou canst bestow, 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? The sword that smote her 's o'er me waving. And leaves my soul unworthy saving. She's gone, who shared my diadem; She sunk, with her my joys entombing; ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF FROM the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome, Flash'd back on the last glance I gave to thy wall. I look'd for thy temple, I look'd for my home, 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, Oh! would that the lightning had glared in its stead, BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT We sat down and wept by the waters Which roll'd on in freedom below, 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 on the morrow lay wither'd and strewn. 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, And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, A SPIRIT PASSED BEFORE ME. A SPIRIT pass'd before me: I beheld '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! * Is this the man of thousand thrones, Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind With might unquestion'd.-power to save,- 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, That led them to adore The triumph, and the vanity, The sword, the sceptre, and that sway All quell'd-Dark Spirit! what must be Certaminis gaudia-the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus. The Desolator desolate! A Suppliant for his own! To die a prince-or live a slave- He who of old would rend the oak,* And darker fate hast found: He fell, the forest prowlers' prey; The Roman,t when his burning heart His only glory was that hour The Spaniard, when the lust of sway, An empire for a cell; A strict accountant of his beads, Yet better had he neither known 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! And Earth hath spilt her blood for him, Thine evil deeds are writ in gore, Nor written thus in vain- If thou hadst died as honour dies, Weigh'd in the balance, hero dust 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,- Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle, WE do not curse thee, Waterloo! As then shall shake the world with wonder- As o'er heaven shall then be bright'ning! * Prometheus, said to have stolen fire from heaven. D |