« 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'u my heart in beauty's eyes,

And felt my soul grow tender ;
All earth can give, or mortal prize,

Was mine of regal splendour.

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 : The fingers of a man ;

A solitary hand Along the letters ran,

And traced them like a wand.

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 hour

Of pleasure unembitter'd;
And not a trapping deck'd my power

That galld 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.

The monarch saw, and shook,

And bade no more rejoicc; 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."

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 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.

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 !
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.

HEROD'S LAMENT FOR MARIAMNE. I 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, Marianne ! where art thou ?

Thou canst not hear my bitter pleading. Ah! couldst thou — thou wouldst pardon now,

Though Heaven were to my prayer unhecding. 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 bell,

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 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 rollid 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,

Oh Salem ! its sound should be tree ;
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 !

ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF

JERUSALEM BY TITUS. From the last hill that looks on thy once holy dome I bebeld thee, oh Sion ! when render'd to Rome : 'T was 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 llad 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.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fuld, 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 Galllee. 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, But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride : And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turt, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surt. 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 !

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 : un. happy in being the object of passionate attachment, which bordered on frenzy, to a man who had inore or less concern in

the murder of her grandfather, father, brother, and uncle, and who had twice cominanded 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 bouly, which led to temporary derangerr.ent. - Millar.)

“Alas! they have been frieniis in south;

But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain :
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain ;
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining -
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been."

COLEHIDGE's Christabel.

Yet, oh yet, thyseif deceive not;

Love may sink by slow decay, But by sudden wrench, believe not

Hearts can thus be torn away: Still tuine own its life retaineth

Still must mine, though bleeding, bcat; Anů 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.

Fare thee well! and if for ever,

Still for ever, 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 bath 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

'T was not well to spurn it so. Though the world for this commend thee

Though it smile upon the blow, Even its praises must utfend thee,

Founded on another's woe :
Though my many faults defaced mc,

Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,

To inflict a cureless wound ?

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 pressid, 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,
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:

' (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 interior artist to the very suminit of distinction. - JEFFREY.]

? [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 con. sidered to be a mere showy effusion of sentiment, as ditficult for real feeling to have produced as it was eas; for lancy and art, and altogether unworthy of the deep interests involved in

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 doubtinz, the swell of tender recollections under the intluence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produceu, – 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. - MUORE. The appearance of the MS. confirms this account of the circumstances under which it was written. IC is blotted all over with the marks of tears.]

STANZAS TO ACGCSTA. 1 W'Hey all around grew drcar and dark,

And reason half withheld her ray And hope but shed a dying spark

Which more misled my lonely way; In that deep midnight of the mind,

And that internal strife of heart, When dreading to be deem'd tou kind,

The weak despair - the cold lepart; When fortune changed - and love fled far,

And hatred's shatts 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 brookThere'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 words might rend — the skies might pour,

But there thou wert - and still wouldst be Devoted in the stormiest brour

To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me. But thou and thine shall know no blight,

Whatever fate on me may fall; For heaven in sunshine will requite

The kind —and thee the most of all. Then let the ties of baffled love

Be broken- thine will never break; Thy heart can feel — but will not move;

Thy soul, though soft, will never shake. And these, when all was lost beside,

Were found and still are fix'd in thee; And bearing still a breast so tried,

Earth is no desert-ev'n to me.

Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,

It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted

It never bath found but in thee.
Then when nature around me is smiling,

The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,

As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.
Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,

And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain — it shall not be its slave. There is many a pang to pursue me :

They may crush, but they shall not contemn They may torture, but shall not subdue mc

'Tis of thee that I think - not of them. * Though human, thou didst not deceive me,

Though woman, chou didst not forsake, Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,

Though slander'd, thou never couldst sbake, Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,

Though parted, it was not to fly, Though watchful, 't was not to defame me,

Nor, mute, that the world might belie. 5 Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

Nor the war of the many with one If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

"T was folly not sooner to shun: And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could foresee, I have found that, whatever it lost me,

It could not deprive me of thee.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,

Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd

Deserved to be dearest of all :
In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

July 24. 1816

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA. 9 Thougn the day of my destiny 's over,

And the star of my fate hath declined, 3.

EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA. 6 Ms 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 :

! (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 rerses 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 circunstances, I trust to stand excused to you and Mr. Sheridan, for being unable to wait upon him this evening." On the 20th, the Poet took a last leave of his native country.]

? [These beautiful verses, so expressive of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, at the Campagne Diolati, near Genera, and transmitted to England for publication, with some other pieces. "Be careiul," he

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.] * (" There is many a pang to pursue me,

And many a peril to stein:
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,

Nor, silent, to sanction a lie.” – MS.) 6 (These stanzas — " Than which," says the Quarterly Review, for January, 1831, " there is, perhaps, nothing more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry" — were also written at Diodati ; and