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 SUF-
FERING 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 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 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 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 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

The curse which, thou sayst, 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 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!

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!

A SPIRIT PASS'D BEFORE ME.
FROM JOB.

A SPIRIT pass'd before me: I beheld
The face of immortality unveil❜d—

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, 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 for ever, 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, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there it stood,—all formless—but divine :
Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake;
And as my damp hair stiffen'd, thus it spake :
"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?
Things of a day! you wither ere the night,
Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!”

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: '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
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.

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.

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."
COLERIDGE's Christabel.

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 woe:

Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,

Than the one which once embraced me,
To inflict a cureless wound?

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.

"It was about the middle of April, 1816, that his two celebrated copies of verses, Fare thee well,' and 'A Sketch,' made their appearance in the newspapers. Byron in his 'Memoranda' 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

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 lineaments 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:
But 't is done-all words are idle-
Words from me are vainer still;
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will.
Fare thee well!-thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie,

Sear'd in heart, and lone, and blighted,
More than this I scarce can die.

A SKETCH.†

"Honest-honest Iago!

[March 17, 1816.]

If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee."
SHAKSPEARE

BORN in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
Next for some gracious service unexpress'd,
And from its wages only to be guess'd—

friend whom he had suffered to take a copy, that the verses met the public eye."-MOORE. The appearance of the MS. confirms this account of the circumstances under which it was written. It is blotted all over with the marks of tears.

"I send you my last night's dream, and request to have fifty copies struck off, for private distribution. I wish Mr. Gifford to look at them. They are from life."-Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, March 30, 1816. The person alluded to in "A Sketch" was Mrs. Clermont, Lady Byron's compan ion.

Raised from the toilette to the table,-where
Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.
With eye unmov'd, and forehead unabash'd,
She dines from off the plate she lately wash'd.
Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie-
The genial confidante, and general spy-
Who could, ye gods! her next employment
An only infant's earliest governess!

She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
That she herself, by teaching, learn'd to spell.
An adept next in penmanship she grows,
As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
What she had made the pupil of her art,
None know-but that high Soul secured the heart,
And panted for the truth it could not hear,
With longing breast and undeluded ear.
Foil'd was perversion by that youthful mind,
Which Flattery fool'd not-Baseness could not
blind,

Deceit infect not-near Contagion soil-
Indulgence weaken-nor Example spoil-
Nor master'd Science tempt her to look down
On humbler talents with a pitying frown-
Nor Genius swell-nor Beauty render vain-
Nor Envy ruffle to retaliate pain-

Nor Fortune change-Pride raise-nor Passion bow,
Nor Virtue teach austerity-till now.
Serenely purest of her sex that live,

But wanting one sweet weakness-to forgive,
Too shock'd at faults her soul can never know,
She deems that all could be like her below:
Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend,
For Virtue pardons those she would amend.

But to the theme :-now laid aside too long,
The baleful burthen of this honest song-
Though all her former functions are no more,
She rules the circle which she served before.
If mothers-none know why-before her quake ;
If daughters dread her for the mother's sake;
If early habits-those false links which bind
At times the loftiest to the meanest mind-
Have given her power too deeply to instill
The angry essence of her deadly will;
If like a snake she steal within your walls,
Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
If like a viper to the heart she wind,

And leave the venom there she did not find;
What marvel that this hag of hatred works
Eternal evil latent as she lurks,

To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
Skill'd by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
With all the kind mendacity of hints,

While mingling truth with falsehood-sneers with smiles

A thread of candor with a web of wiles;

A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd schem-
ing:

A lip of lies; a face form'd to conceal,
And, without feeling, mock at all who feel:
With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
A cheek of parchment-and an eye of stone.
Mark, how the channels of her yellow blood
Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud,
Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale-
(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
Congenial colors in that soul or face)-

Where all beneath her influence droop or die.

Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought,
Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought-
The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
May the strong curse of crush'd affections light
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black-as thy will for others would create:
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with
prayer,

Look on thine earthly victims-and despair!
Down to the dust!-and, as thou rott'st away,
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear-
Thy name-thy human name-to every eye
The climax of all scorn should hang on high,
Exalted o'er thy less abhorr'd compeers-
And festering in the infamy of years.

[March 29, 1816.]

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.* WHEN all around grew drear and dark, And reason half withheld her rayAnd 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 too kind,
The weak despair-the cold depart;

When fortune changed-and love fled far,
And hatred's shafts 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 brook-
There'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 winds might rend-the skies might pour, But there thou wert-and still wouldst be Devoted in the stormiest hour

To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

Bnt 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.

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.* THOUGH the day of my destiny's over, And the star of my fate hath declined, 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 hath 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 me-
'Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake;
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.
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,

These beautiful verses, so expressive of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, 1816, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva, and transmitted to England for publication, with some other pieces.

My 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: Go where I will, to me thou art the sameA loved regret which I would not resign. There yet are two things in my destiny,A world to roam through, and a home with thee. The first were nothing—had I still the last, It were the haven of my happiness;

But other claims and other ties thou hast, And mine is not the wish to make them less. A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;

Reversed for him our grandsire's† fate of yore,— He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks

Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain❜d my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox ;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward, My whole life was a contest, since the day That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd The gift, a fate, or will, that walk'd astray; And I at times have found the struggle hard, And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay': But now I fain would for a time survive, If but to see what next can well arrive.

Kingdoms and empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the petty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
Something-I know not what-does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience;-not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
Within me, or perhaps a cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur,-
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air

(For even to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armor we may learn to bear),
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
The chief companion of a calmer lot.

I feel almost at times as I have felt In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books, Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; And even at moments I could think I see Some living thing to love-but none like thee. Here are the Alpine landscapes which create A fund for contemplation;-to admire

+ Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of "Foul-weather Jack."