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WERE MY BOSOM AS FALSE AS THOU And now on that mountain I stood on that day,

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

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.' 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 phrensy'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!

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, oh Father, is only for thee.

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT
DOWN AND WEPT.

WE sate 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, oh 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 forever,
Ere it string our high harp for the foe!
On the willow that harp is suspended,

Oh 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 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,

ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew

JERUSALEM BY TITUS.

FROM the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome
I beheld thee, oh 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.

[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 phrensy, to a man who had more or less concern in

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!

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 the body, which led to temporary derangement.-MILMAN.]

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FARE thee well! and if forever,

Still forever, fare thee well:

Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee

Which thou ne'er canst know again:
Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show!
Then thou wouldst at last discover
"Twas not well to spurn it so.

Though the world for this commend thee-
Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praises must offend thee,
Founded on another's wo:

Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
To inflict a cureless wound?

[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 the subject. To this latter

Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not;
Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:

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 lincaments resemble

Those thou never more mayst see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me.

All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know ;
All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
Wither, yet with thee they go.

Every feeling hath been shaken;

Pride, which not a world could bow, Bows to thee-by thee forsaken,

Even my soul forsakes me now:

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 Memoran is. 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 publ eye.-MOORE. The appearance of the MS. conarms tas account of the circumstances under which it was written It is blotted all over with the marks of tears.]

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