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,
Hoir to my royalty, son of my heart !
Bright is the diadem, houndless the sway,
Or kingly the death, which awaits us to-day.

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 band 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.
Tkou, thy race, lie pale and low,
Pierced by shafts of many a bow ;
And the falchion by thy side
To thy heart thy band shall guide:
Crownless, breathless, headless fall,
Fon and sire, the house of Saul."

“ 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 rolld no hour

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 stray,

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 seeing 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 feet like earthly year;

Its years as moments shall enduré. Away, away, without a wing,

O'er all, through all, its thought sha!! fig; 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 it true.
“Belshazzar's grave is made,

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 dispol,
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 raya ;
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
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 beston,
As the God who permits thee to prosper doth know;
In His hand is my heart and my hopa—and in thino
The land and the life which for Him I resign.

HEROD'S LAMENT FOR MARIAMNE,

On, Mariamne! now for thee

T'he 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 !

ON THE DAY OF THE DESTRUCTION OF

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;

bebeld but the death-fire that feil 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 declino
of the rays from the mountain that shone on thy shrine.
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 !