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THE WILD GAZELLE.

THE wild gazelle on Judah's hills
Exulting yet may bound,
And drink from all the living rills
That gush on holy ground:
Its airy step and glorious eye

May glance in tameless transport by:

A step as fleet, an eye more bright,
Hath Judah witness'd there,
And o'er her scenes of lost delight
Inhabitants more fair.

The cedars wave on Lebanon,

But Judah's statelier maids are gone!

More blest each palm that shades those plains Than Israel's scatter'd race;

For, taking root, it there remains

In solitary grace:

It cannot quit its place of birth,
It will not live in other earth.

But we must wander witheringly,
In other lands to die;

And where our fathers' ashes be,
Our own may never lie:
Our temple hath not left a stone,
And Mockery sits on Salem's throne.

OH! WEEP FOR THOSE.

JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER.

SINCE our Country, our God-oh, my sire! Demand that thy daughter expire;

Since thy triumph was bought by thy vowStrike the bosom that's bared for thee now !

And the voice of my mourning is o'er,
And the mountains behold me no more:
If the hand that I love lay me low,
There cannot be pain in the blow!

And of this, O my father! be sure-
That the blood of thy child is as pure
As the blessing I beg ere it flow,

And the last thought that soothes me below.
Though the virgins of Saleni lament,
Be the judge and the hero unbent !
I have won the great battle for thee,
And my father and country are free!

When this blood of thy giving hath gush'd,
When the voice that thou lovest is hush'd,
Let my memory still be thy pride,
And forget not I smiled as I died!

OH! SNATCH'D AWAY IN BEAUTY'S
BLOOM.

́OH! snatch'd away in beauty's bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year;

OH! weep for those that wept by Babel's stream,
Whose shrines are desolate, whose land a dream;
Weep for the harp of Judah's broken shell;
Mourn where their God hath dwelt, the god-And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom:

less dwell!

And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet?
And when shall Zion's songs again seem sweet?
And Judah's melody once more rejoice
The hearts that leap'd before its heavenly voice?
Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
How shall ye flee away and be at rest!

The wild-dove hath her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind their country-Israel but the grave!

ON JORDAN'S BANKS.

ON Jordan's banks the Arab's camels stray,
On Sion's hill the False One's votaries pray,
The Baal-adorer bows on Sinai's steep-

Yet there even there-O God! Thy thunders sleep:

There where Thy finger scorch'd the tablet stone !

There where Thy shadow to Thy people shone!
Thy glory shrouded in its garb of fire:
Thyself-none living see and not expire!
Oh! in the lightning let Thy glance appear:
Sweep from his shiver'd hand the oppressor's

spear:

How long by tyrants shall Thy land be trod? How long Thy temple worshipless, O God!

And oft by yon blue gushing stream

Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head, And feed deep thought with many a dream, And lingering pause and lightly tread ; Fond wretch ! as if her step disturb'd the dead! 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
The harp I yet can brook to hear,
And let thy gentle fingers fling

Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,

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,
Nor let thy notes of joy he first :

I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst:

For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless silence long;
And now 'tis doom'd to know the worst,
And break at once-or yield to song.

I SAW THEE WEEP.

I SAW thee weep-the big bright tear
Came o'er that eye of blue;
And then methought it did appear
A violet dropping dew:

I saw thee smile-the sapphire's blaze
Beside thee ceased to shine;

It could not match the living rays
That fill'd that glance of thine.

As clouds from yonder sun receive

A deep and mellow dye,

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
That lightens o'er the heart.

THY DAYS ARE DONE.
THY days are done, thy fame begun ;
Thy country's strains record

The triumphs of her chosen son,
The slaughters of his sword!
The deeds he did, the fields he won,
The freedom he restored!

Though thou art fall'n, while we are free
Thou shalt not taste of death!
The generous blood that flow'd from thee
Disdain'd to sink beneath :
Within our veins its currents be,

Thy spirit on our breath!

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 hou
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 harming;
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, unembodied, 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 seeir g 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
'Belshazzar's grave is made,

true.

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 wander'd from far Galilee ;
It was but abjuring my creed to efface [race.
The curse which, thou say'st, is the crime of my
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,
[know;

As the God who permits thee to prosper doth 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.

Oн, 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!

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, [gold; And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, [Galilee. When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep FROM the last hill that looks on thy once holy Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is

ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS.

dome,

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decline

Or many an eve, the high spot whence I gazed Hid reflected the last beam of day as it azed; While I stood on the height and beheld the [shrine. Of the rays from the mountain that shone on thy 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,
[head!
And the thunderbolt burst on the conqueror's
But the gods of the Pagan shall never profane
The shrine where Jehovah disdain'd not to
reign;
[be,
may

And scatter'd and scorn'd as thy people
Our worship, O Father is only for Thee.

green,

blown,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the

And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd; blast, And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and [grew still!

chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his
pride;
[turf,
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the
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

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 ?

Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine-Things of a day! you wither ere the night,

And there it stood-all formless, but divine: Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake;

Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!'

And as my damp hair stiffen'd, thus it spake :

POEMS ON NAPOLEON.

ODE TO NAPOLEON.

Expende Annibalem :-quot libras in duce summo
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*

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

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!

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 has done at length,

And darker fate has found:
He fell, the forest prowlers' prey;
But thou must eat thy heart away!

The Roman,† 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,

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