IF THAT HIGH WORLD. The eye the same, except in tears- It must be so: 'tis not for self That we so tremble on the brink, And, striving to o'erleap the gulf, Yet cling to Being's severing link. Oh! in that future let us think To hold each heart the heart that shares, With them the immortal waters drink, And soul in soul grow deathless theirs! tenderness of expression, than in loftiness and purity of religious sentiment. In comparison with them, the sacred poetry of all other nations sinks into mediocrity. They have embodied so exquisitely the universal language of religious emotion, that (a few fierce and vindictive passages excepted, natural in the warrior-poet of a sterner age) they have entered with unquestionable propriety into the Christian ritual. The songs which cheered the solitude of the desert caves of Engedi, or resounded from the voice of the Hebrew people as they wound along the glens or the hill-sides of Judea, have been repeated for ages in almost every part of the habitable world,-in the remotest islands of the ocean, among the forests of America, or the sands of Africa. How many human hearts have they softened, purified, exalted! -of how many wretched beings have they been the secret consolation on how many communities have they drawn down the blessings of Divine Providence, by bringing the affections in unison with their deep devotional fervour!" Millman.-L. E. "The words of this melody have been greatly and deservedly admired; yet the circumstances that attended the composition of the latter lines may be interesting. When Weep for the harp of Judah's broken shell; ON JORDAN'S BANKS. ON Jordan's banks the Arab's camels stray, There where thy finger scorch'd the tablet stone! Oh! in the lightning let thy glance appear; Sweep from his shiver'd hand the oppressor's spear. JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER. (1) SINCE our country, our God-O my sire! And the voice of my mourning is o'er, And of this, O my father! be sure— And the last thought that soothes me below. Though the virgins of Salem lament, his Lordship put the copy into my hand, it terminated thus: Its sound aspired to heaven, and there abode.' This however did not complete the verse, and I wished him to help out the melody. He replied, "Why, I have sent you to heaven-it would be difficult to go further! My attention for a few moments was called to some other person, and his Lordship, whom I had hardly missed, exclaimed'Here, Nathan, I have brought you down again;' and immediately presented me the beautiful and sublime lines which conclude the melody." Nathan.-P. E. (1) Jephtha, a bastard son of Gilead, having been wrongfully expelled from his father's house, had taken refuge in a wild country, and become a noted captain of freebooters. His kindred, groaning under foreign oppression, began to look to their valiant though lawless compatriot, whose profession, according to their usage, was no more dishonourable than that of a pirate in the elder days of Greece. They sent for him, and made him head of their city. Before he went forth against the Ammonites, he made the memorable vow, that, if he returned victorious, he would sacrifice as a burnt-offering whatever first met him When this blood of thy giving hath gush'd, OH! SNATCH'D AWAY IN BEAUTY'S OH! snatch'd away in beauty's bloom, Their leaves, the earliest of the year; And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom: Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head, Away! we know that tears are vain, That death nor heeds nor hears distress: Will this unteach us to complain? Or make one mourner weep the less? And thou-who tell'st me to forget, Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet. MY SOUL IS DARK. My soul is dark-Oh! quickly string Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear: That sound shall charm it forth again; If in these eyes there lurk a tear, "Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain. But bid the strain be wild and deep, Or else this heavy heart will burst; And ached in sleepless silence long; And now 'tis doom'd to know the worst, And break at once-or yield to song.(1) I SAW THEE WEEP. I SAW thee weep-the big bright tear A violet dropping dew: I saw thee smile-the sapphire's blaze It could not match the living rays on his entrance into his native city. He gained a splendid victory. At the news of it, his only daughter came dancing forth, in the gladness of her heart, and with jocund instruments of music, to salute the deliverer of his people. The 1 miserable father rent his clothes in agony; but the noblespirited maiden would not hear of the disregard of the vow she only demanded a short period to bewail upon the mountains, like the Antigone of Sophocles, her dying without hope of becoming a bride or mother, and then submitted to her fate." Millman.-L. E. (1) "It was generally conceived that Lord Byron's reported singularities approached on some occasions to derangement, and at one period, indeed, it was very currently asserted that As clouds from yonder sun receive Which scarce the shade of coming eve Can banish from the sky, Those smiles unto the moodiest mind Their own pure joy impart: Their sunshine leaves a glow behind THY DAYS ARE DONE. Though thou art fall'n, while we are free Thy spirit on our breath! Thy name, our charging hosts along, To weep would do thy glory wrong; SONG OF SAUL BEFORE HIS LAST WARRIORS and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow, SAUL. (2) 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. his intellects were actually impaired. The report only served to amuse his Lordship. He referred to the circumstance, and declared that he would try how a madman could write: seizing the pen with eagerness, he for a moment fixed his eyes in majestic wildness on vacancy; when like a flash of inspiration, without erasing a single word, the above verses were the result." Nathan.-P. E. (2) "Haunted with that insatiable desire of searching into the secrets of futurity, inseparable from uncivilised man, Saul knew not to what quarter to turn. The priests, outraged by his cruelty, had forsaken him: the prophets stood aloof: no dreams visited his couch; he had persecuted even the unlawful diviners. He hears at last of a female Death stood all glassy in his fixed eye; "Why is my sleep disquieted? Who is he that calls the dead? "ALL IS VANITY, SAITH THE PREACHER." And lovely forms caress'd me: I strive to number o'er what days There rose no day, there roll'd no hour 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 harming; The soul that must endure it. necromancer, a woman with the spirit of Ob; strangely similar in sound to the Obeah women in the West Indies. To the cave-dwelling of this woman, in Endor, the monarch proceeds in disguise. He commands her to raise the spirit of Samuel. At this daring demand, the woman first recog nises, or pretends to recognise, her royal visitor. Whom seest thou?' says the king.- Mighty ones ascending from the earth.'-'Of what form ?'- An old man covered with a mantle.' Saul, in terror, bows down his head to the earth; and, it should seem, not daring to look up, receives from the voice of the spectre the awful intimation of his defeat and death. On the reality of this apparition we pretend not to decide: the figure, if figure there were, was not seen by Saul; and, excepting the event of the approaching battle, the spirit said nothing which the living prophet had not said before, repeatedly and publicly. But the fact is curious, as showing the popular belief of the Jews in de 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, 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 divineJehovah'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: parted spirits to have been the same with that of most other nations." Millman.-L. E. (1) "Since we have spoken of witches," said Lord Byron at Cephalonia, in 1823, “what think you of the witch of Endor? I have always thought this the finest and most finished witch-scene that ever was written or conceived; and you will be of my opinion, if you consider all the cir cumstances and the actors in the case, together with the gravity, simplicity, and dignity of the language. It beats all the ghost-scenes I ever read. The finest conception on a similar subject is that of Goethe's devil, Mephistopheles; and though, of course, you will give the priority to the former, as being inspired, yet the latter, if you know it, will appear to you-at least it does to me-one of the finest and most sublime specimens of human conception." Kennedy's Conversations on Religion, etc., with Lord Byron.-L. E. The fingers of a manA solitary handAlong the letters ran, And traced them like a wand. The monarch saw, and shook, And bade no more rejoice; The wisest of the earth, Chaldea's seers are good, But here they have no skill; Are wise and deep in lore; A captive in the land, A stranger and a youth, The prophecy in view; The morrow proved it true. Is light and worthless clay. The Persian on his throne!" SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS! SUN of the sleepless! melancholy star! So gleams the past, the light of other days, WERE MY BOSOM AS FALSE AS THOU WERE my bosom as false as thou deem'st it to be, The curse which, thou say'st, is the crime of my race. (1) "Mariamne, the wife of Herod the Great, falling under the suspicion of infidelity, was put to death by his order. She was a woman of unrivalled beauty, and a haughty spirit: unhappy in being the object of passionate attachment, which bordered on frenzy, to a man who had more or less concern in the murder of her grandfather, father, 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. (1) Он, 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: And is she dead?—and did they dare 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! brother, and uncle, and who had twice commanded her death, in case of his own. Ever after, Herod was haunted by the image of the murdered Mariamne, until disorder of the mind brought on disorder of body, which led to temporary derangement." Millman.-L. E. 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 Which roll'd on in freedom below, That triumph the stranger shall know! On the willow that harp is suspended, Oh Salem! its sound should be free; And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended 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 strown. 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, And there lay the rider, distorted and pale, (1) "The Hebrew Melodies, though obviously inferior to Lord Byron's other works, display a skill in versification. and a mastery in diction, which would have raised an inferior artist to the very summit of distinction." Jeffrey. -L. E. (2) The two last pieces were not printed in the original collection. The first seems to be an inferior version of the Hebrew Melody beginning, “We sat down and wept by the waters;" both poems being paraphrases of part of Psalm cxxxvii.-P. E. (3) Mr. Nathan, the composer of the music for the Hebrew Melodies, relates the following anecdote relative to these lines:"Having been officiously taken up by a person who And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, A SPIRIT PASS'D BEFORE ME. FROM JOB. A SPIRIT pass'd before me: I beheld IN THE VALLEY OF WATERS.(2) In the valley of waters we wept o'er the day All stringlessly hang on the willow's sad tree, THEY SAY THAT HOPE IS HAPPINESS. But genuine love must prize the past, Alas! it is delusion all; The future cheats us from afar, Nor dare we think on what we are. (3) arrogated to himself some self importance in criticism, and who made an observation upon their demerits, Lord Byron quaintly observed, 'They were written in haste, and they shall perish in the same manner!' and immediately consigned them to the flames. As my music adapted to them, however, did not share the same fate, and having a contrary opinion of any thing that might fall from the pen of his Lordship, I treasured them up, and on a subsequent interview with his Lordship, I accused him of having committed suicide in making so valuable a burnt-offering: to which he smilingly replied, 'The act seems to inflame you; come, Nathan, since you are displeased with the sacrifice, I will give ther to you as a peace offering, use them as you may deem p: per.'"-P. E. |