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, 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.' 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; But I mark'd not the twilight beam melting away; BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON WE SAT WE sate down and wept by the waters While sadly we gazed on the river Which roll'd on in freedom below, 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, 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 [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, 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.] FARE thee well! and if forever, Still forever, fare thee well: Even though unforgiving, never Which thou ne'er canst know again: Though the world for this commend thee- Though my many faults defaced me, [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; 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, When her little hands shall press thee, Should her lincaments resemble Those thou never more mayst 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: 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.] |