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: 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. 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; Whose leaves for me alone were blooming; ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF FROM the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome I look'd for thy temple, I look'd for my home, On many an eve, the high spot whence I gazed 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 And now on that mountain I stood on that day, BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT WE sate down and wept by the waters Which roll'd on in freedom below, That triumph the stranger shall know! Oh Salem! its sound should be free; 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 heav'd, and for ever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, And there lay the rider distorted and pale, And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, the murder of her grandfather, father, 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.-MILMAN.] [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.] 2 [It was about the middle of April that his two celebrated copies of verses, "Fare thee well," and "A Sketch," made their appearance in the newspapers; and while the latter poem was generally, and, it must be owned, justly condemned, as a sort of literary assault on an obscure female, whose situation ought to have placed her as much beneath his satire, as the undignified mode of his attack certainly raised her above it, with regard to the other poem, opinions were a good deal more divided. To many it appeared a strain of true conjugal tenderness, a kind of appeal which no woman with a heart could resist; while, by others, on the contrary, it was considered to be a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as difficult for real feeling to have produced as it was easy for fancy and art, and altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in Yet, oh yet, thyseif deceive not; Still thine own its life retaineth Still must mine, though bleeding, beat; And the undying thought which paineth Is that we no more may meet. These are words of deeper sorrow Than the wail above the dead; Both shall live, but every morrow Wake us from a widow'd bed. And when thou would solace gather, When our child's first accents flow, Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!" Though his care she must forego? When her little hands shall press thee, When her lip to thine is press'd, Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee, Think of him thy love had bless'd! Should her lineaments resemble Those thou never more may'st see, All my faults perchance thou knowest, Every feeling hath been shaken; Pride, which not a world could bow, Bows to thee-by thee forsaken, Even my soul forsakes me now: the subject. To this latter opinion I confess my own to have, at first, strongly inclined; and suspicious as I could not help thinking the sentiment that could, at such a moment, indulge in such verses, the taste that prompted or sanctioned their publication appeared to me even still more questionable. On reading, however, his own account of all the circumstances in the Memoranda, I found that on both points I had, in common with a large portion of the public, done him injustice. He there described, and in a manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender recollections under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produced, the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them. Neither did it appear, from that account, to have been from any wish or intention of his own, but through the injudicious zeal of a friend whom he had suffered to take a copy, that the verses met the public eye.-MOORE. The appearance of the MS. confirms this account of the circumstances under which it was written. It is blotted all over with the marks of tears.] where BORN in the garret, in the kitchen bred, A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming, Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged- Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought, She taught the child to read, and taught so well, 1 And turn thee howling in unpitied pain. Nor Fortune change- Pride raise--nor Passion bow, Black-as thy will for others would create: Nor Virtue teach austerity- till now. But wanting one sweet weakness-to forgive, But to the theme:-now laid aside too long, The baleful burthen of this honest song Though all her former functions are no more, She rules the circle which she served before. If mothers-none know why-before her quake; If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake; If early habits-those false links, which bind At times the loftiest to the meanest mind 1["I send you my last night's dream, and request to have fifty copies struck off, for private distribution. I wish Mr. Gifford to look at them. They are from life."-Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, March 30. 1816.] [In first draught" weltering.""I doubt about 'weltering.' We say weltering in blood;' but do not they also STANZAS TO AUGUSTA. 1 In that deep midnight of the mind, The weak despair-the cold depart; When fortune changed-and love fled far, And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast, Thou wert the solitary star Which rose, and set not to the last. Oh! blest be thine unbroken light! That watch'd me as a seraph's eye, And stood between me and the night, For ever shining sweetly nigh And when the cloud upon us came, Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray- Then purer spread its gentle flame, And dash'd the darkness all away. Still may thy spirit dwell on mine, And teach it what to brave or brook— There's more in one soft word of thine Than in the world's defied rebuke. Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree, That still unbroke, though gently bent, Still waves with fond fidelity Its boughs above a monument. The winds might rend-the skies might pour, To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me. The kind-and thee the most of all. Be broken-thine will never break; Were found and still are fix'd in thee;. STANZAS TO AUGUSTA. 2 THOUGH the day of my destiny's over, And the star of my fate hath declined, 3 [The Poet's sister, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh. - These stanzas the parting tribute to her, whose unshaken tenderness had been the author's sole consolation during the crisis of domestic misery-were, we believe, the last verses written by Lord Byron in England. In a note to Mr. Rogers, dated April 16th, he says, "My sister is now with me, and leaves town to-morrow: we shall not meet again for some time at all events, if ever! and, under these circumstances, I trust to stand excused to you and Mr. Sheridan, for being unable to wait upon him this evening." On the 25th, the Poet took a last leave of his native country.] 2[These beautiful verses, so expressive of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva, and transmitted to England for publication, with some other pieces. "Be careful," he Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find; Then when nature around me is smiling, Because it reminds me of thine; And when winds are at war with the ocean, It is that they bear me from thee. They may crush, but they shall not contemn Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake, – "T was folly not sooner to shun: From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd, It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd In the desert a fountain is springing, July 24. 1816. EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA. 6 My sister my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine. Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, Though the day of my destiny's,' &c., which I think well of as a composition."] 3 ["Though the days of my glory are over, And the sun of my fame hath declined."- MS.] 4 ["There is many a pang to pursue me, And many a peril to stem: They may torture, but shall not subdue me; They may crush, but they shall not contemn."-MS.] ["Though watchful, 't was but to reclaim me, MS.] ་ Nor, silent, to sanction a lie." |