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SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE, 
 
 OTHER POEMS. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. GEORGE CROLY, L.L.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF " SALATHIEL, ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 COLBURN AND CO., PUBLISHERS, 
 
 &REAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 1851. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 Printed l)y Schulze and Co., 1.3, Poland Street. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The History of English Versions from the Hebrew 
 poets is yet to be written. But Warton, in his volumes 
 on English poetrj', has referred to the subject, at suffi- 
 cient length to satisfy general curiosity, and wdth suffi- 
 cient elegance to gratify public taste. 
 
 In the primitive worship of Christianity, the singing 
 of " Psalms, and Hymns, and Spiritual Songs," occupied 
 an important place. But in the worship of the Romish 
 Church, that place was gradually filled by the chaunting 
 of the priest ; while, in the progress of musical science, 
 the Anthem superseded the simplicity of the Hymn. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, the Reformers restored the 
 singing of the congregation to its original rank ; and 
 the Psalmody of Luther and his successors formed a 
 characteristic feature of the popular devotion. Whether 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 to counteract this new influence, or to re-establish a 
 reputation for piety, Clement Marot, a name equally 
 known in his day for poetry and profligacy, in 1539, 
 published a French version of thirty of the Psalms, and 
 the success of this work was as singular as its origin. 
 Dedicated to Frdncis I., with the imprimatur of the 
 Sorbonne, it was welcomed by the Monarch almost with 
 enthusiasm ; novelty, nationality, and, perhaps, rivalry 
 of the Reformers, made it universally popular. Francis 
 and his courtiers selected each a Psalm, for peculiar 
 favouritism ; and the most immoral Court in Europe 
 resounded with religious song. 
 
 This was the age of verbal chivalry ; and France gave 
 the amplest testimony of its spirit, by inscribing on the 
 tomb of Marot : " Ci gist des Francais le VirgiLe et 
 I'Homere." 
 
 The celebrated Calvin, with whom Marot was inti- 
 mate, introduced this version into the Church of Geneva, 
 and employed Beza to complete the whole number of the 
 Psalms, The faults attributed to Beza's performance 
 are, a general tendency to unnecessary paraphrase, occa- 
 sional misconceptions of the original, and the use of ex- 
 pressions too familiar for the dignity of Scripture. 
 
 With the Reformation congregational singing began 
 in England. For the first time in a thousand vears the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 people were joined with the minister in an important, 
 beautiful, and affecting portion of Christian worship. 
 Congregational singing now became a public right, and 
 the version of the Psalms a public demand. Single 
 Psalms were rapidly contributed ; of those the ablest 
 were by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 But a general version was required, and this was under- 
 taken—unfortunately more to the honour of their dili- 
 gence, than of their capacity — by Sternhold and Hop- 
 kins. 
 
 Sternhold was a man of condition, educated at 
 Oxford, and Groom of the Robes to Henry VIII., who, 
 as a mark of his approval, left him a legacy. He held the 
 same considerable office under Edward VI. Hopkins 
 seerns to have been little more than his editor. Stern- 
 hold died, when he had versified about a third of the 
 Psalms, but he had several assistants, by w^hom the 
 work appears to have been completed. The first edition 
 was published in 1562. The work has passed into 
 a proverb, for presumption of attempt and inadequacy 
 of means. 
 
 Warton, himself a scholar and a poet, says : " Our 
 versifiers of the Psalms have been but little qualified, 
 either by genius or accomplishments, for poetical com- 
 position. It is for this reason that they have produced 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 a translation entirely destitute of elegance, spirit, and 
 propriety." 
 
 He adds : "I presume I am communicating no 
 very new criticism, when I observe, that in every part of 
 this translation we are disgusted with a languor of versi- 
 fication, and a want of common prosody, characterizing 
 the whole as lowered by coldness of conception, weakened 
 by frigid interpolations, and disfigured by a poverty of 
 phraseology." 
 
 Bishop Horsely boldly takes the opposite side. " The 
 metrical version of the old singing Psalms by Sternhold 
 and Hopkins is not, what I believe it is generally sup- 
 posed to be, nothing better than an awkward versifica- 
 tion of a former English translation. It was an original 
 translation from the Hebrew text, earlier, by many 
 years, than the prose translation in the Bible ; and it is 
 the best and most exact we have, to put into the hands 
 of the common people. The authors of this version 
 considered the verse merely as a contrivance to assist 
 the memory." 
 
 However, he thus gives up its poetry, the matter in 
 question. He then falls on the present version by Tate 
 and Brady : 
 
 " It was a change much for the worse, when the 
 pedantry of pretenders to taste thrust out this excel- 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 lent (!) translation from many of our churches, to make 
 room for that which goes by the name of the New 
 Version, which in many places where the old version 
 is just, accurate, and dignified by its simplicity, is 
 careless and inadequate, and, by the poverty and Httleness 
 of its style, contemptible." 
 
 But the pubhc taste had long decided against the 
 ancient version, whose whole force consists in a rugged 
 adherence to the original. Warton's exaggerated 
 scorn of all versions of the Sacred Writings, may be 
 partially attributed to the pecuhar provocations of a 
 time, in which Scripture was treated with irreverent 
 familiarity, in which Hymns conveyed the language of 
 almost earthly passion, and the highest doctrines 
 were rhymed into the transports of religious reverie. 
 Of those, he indignantly speaks " as exhibiting a species 
 of poetry, if it may be so called, which even impoverishes 
 prose, or rather by mixing the style of prose with verse, 
 and of verse ^rith prose, destroys the character and 
 effect of both." 
 
 On the whole ; when it is remembered, that the 
 ancient version wasmade on the verge of the Eliza- 
 bethan age, when the English tongue was most poetic, 
 when Spenser was so soon to display the redundant 
 luxuriance of the language, and Shakespeare to show its ^ 
 
VIU PREFACE. 
 
 matchless harmony ; it is difficult to account for the 
 rudeness of this Version, but by the inferiority of its 
 authors to the demands of their duty, and to the 
 genius of their time. 
 
 Still, many of the Psalms have since been vigorously 
 transferred to English verse, and there can be no reason 
 why the noblest truths should not be capable of the 
 noblest transfer to a language, already found capable 
 of expressing every passion, however vivid, and eveiy 
 sentiment, however sublime. 
 
 But there is one application of verse to Scripture, 
 which appears to have been less tried : — the description 
 of striking events in its history, and the transfer of 
 those powerful declamations, which abound more in the 
 prophetic pages than in any other works of man. 
 
 At the head of all Poetry must stand the poets of 
 Judaea. I can find even in the great writers of Greece 
 or Rome, no rival to their intensity, richness, and accu- 
 mulation of ideas. This is no new conception with 
 me. In some observations, which I had once occasion 
 to deliver in public, I remarked on the variety, force, 
 and living grandeur of those illustrious compositions. 
 
 " Poured forth to awake the apathy, or rebuke the 
 guilt of Kings and people, they perform a duty never 
 required of language before, and they were divinely 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 provided with a language fitted for the duty. It is 
 a continual torrent of pathetic, or indignant, eloquence. 
 Every conceivable image of national suffering, and 
 personal anguish ; every vivid menace of human trial, 
 and divine vengeance ; every possible scene of national 
 struggle, and individual ruin, crowds their predictions. — 
 Nations fighting the battle of despair ; nations flying 
 before the invader ; nations torn from their home, and 
 driven out to die among the deserts, and under the 
 burning skies, of a foreign land. The sitters under the 
 vine and fig-tree of Palestine, swept to the swamps of 
 Media, Hngering out life in the Assyrian sands, or 
 dying in the labours and chains of Babylon. 
 
 " Their images from nature are not less true, or less 
 powerful — the scorching winds of the wilderness ; the 
 tempest among the sands ; the ruined and lifeless city ; 
 the polluted temple ; the land lying awe-struck and 
 silent under the pestilence ; ' the sky of brass and the 
 soil of iron.' 
 
 " But in all their diversities of style, they have an 
 impress which raises them above earthly comparison. 
 They speak with the authority of an inspired mission. 
 Their language has a purpose altogether divine. They 
 lavish their powers on no rich description of nature, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 and no luxuriant display of their genius. Their 
 language is not born of flesh and blood. Like the 
 Israelites in the Babylonian furnace, they walk in fire, 
 they speak in fire, and with them ' walketh one' more 
 than Man, a protecting and inspiring Glory." • 
 
 I would almost assume, that the severe grandeur 
 of the primitive Greek poetry was derived from Judaea. 
 It seems to me that the very tone of Homer is 
 Scriptural, and that in his sonorous simplicity I hear 
 the echoes of the Prophetic trumpet, only softened by 
 the airs of his Ionian shore. 
 
 It can scarcely be questioned, that Greece was but a 
 brilliant plagiary in the whole range of her Philosophy 
 and Religion ; that the philosophy of Thales was only the 
 fantastic reflex of the philosophy of Moses ; that her 
 Mysteries were only Revelation, thrown into phantom 
 lights and shades ; and that, in contradiction to the 
 Northern and Egyptian theories, the reveries of Rudbeck, 
 Banier and Creutzer, the whole body of the Grecian 
 Mythology, its Pandora and Epimetheus, its Saturn 
 and Hercules, its Latona and Apollo, its celestial wars 
 and earthly wonders, were only fillings up of the outline 
 of Scripture, by the most romantic masters of invention 
 in the world. 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 " Thus, the Prometheus of ^schylus, the leading 
 work of the leader of the Drama, is palpably founded 
 on the Pentateuch. 
 
 " Prometheus is Cain. — The guilty sacrifice, the con- 
 demned existence, the eternal exile, the perpetual gnaw- 
 ing of the heart, the mixture of defiance and despair, of 
 uTCcoverable obduracy and undying remorse, of hopeless 
 agony and helpless revolt, all belong to the first mur- 
 derer — and to none other in the history of man ! There 
 is no other being, punished by a divine sentence, 
 pursued by a divine malediction, and lingering through 
 a di\dnely-protracted life of misery, an outcast fi'om 
 mankind. Even the substitution of the stolen fire for 
 the tme, the Shechinah, ' fi-om thy presence I shall be 
 hid,' and the invention of the Arts by him, ' who first 
 built a city,' are but additional features of the identity. 
 " If we have lost two of the three Dramas of 
 ^schylus on this subject, broken off, like two trines of 
 a thunderbolt ; still the proof of the splendid plagiarism 
 is complete. One of the Choi-uses even alludes to the 
 Resurrection ! 
 
 " The later Dramatists of Greece descend nearer to 
 man, and solicit in pathos what they sacrifice in power. 
 Sophocles and Euripides are superb sons of men, but 
 iEschvlus is the Titan." 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 Some of the Poems contained in this volume are 
 now published for the first time ; the rest have been 
 collected from the various periodical publications in 
 which they appeared long since, and which have gene- 
 rally passed away. 
 
 In the quotations from Scripture, the sentences 
 selected are only those illustrative of the principal 
 features of the poems. 
 
 An eloquent and attractive volume on the general 
 spirit of the Prophetic Writings, has lately been 
 published— " The Bards of the Bible," by the Rev. 
 G. Gilfillan, of Dundee. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE EUTHAXASIA 
 
 THE LAST DAY OF JERUSALEM 
 
 SUPPLICATION 
 
 ESTHER 
 
 SELF-EXAMINATIOX 
 
 THE THIRD TEMPTATION" 
 
 THE VISION OF GOD 
 
 THE SIXTH SEAL 
 
 THE POW-ER OF PRAYER 
 
 BELSHAZZAR . 
 
 MIDNIGHT 
 
 MALACHI 
 
 A DIRGE 
 
 BALAK AND BALAAM 
 
 EZEKIEL 
 
 THE EVENING STAR 
 
 JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 12 
 
 14 
 31 
 33 
 38 
 41 
 46 
 49 
 55 
 56 
 64 
 67 
 73 
 78 
 80 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE PROPHECY OF JERUSALEM 
 
 RETRIBUTION 
 
 HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 THE PROPHECY AGAINST TYRE 
 
 THE ATLANTIC 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 MAN . 
 
 ELISHA IN DOTHAN . 
 
 HYMN OP THE MARTYRS 
 
 THE WORLD 
 
 THE JUDGMENT DAY . 
 
 WRATH ON JERUSALEM 
 
 THE WOE UPON ISRAEL 
 
 THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 
 
 THE EMPEROR AND THE RABBI 
 
 REMEMBRANCE 
 
 THE WANDERINGS OF lo 
 
 ALGIERS 
 
 SORROW 
 
 THE FURIES 
 
 EPITAPH FOR PETRARCH 
 
 PAGE 
 
 87 
 ICO 
 104 
 107 
 113 
 119 
 130 
 133 
 143 
 146 
 148 
 152 
 156 
 163 
 180 
 184 
 187 
 196 
 208 
 209 
 218 
 
SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE 
 
 WITH OT 
 
 OEMS. 
 
 THE EUTHANASIA. 
 
 " Thou wilt shew me the path of life. In Thy presence is fulness of 
 joy." — Psalm xvi, 2. 
 
 (written in a bible.) 
 
 What art thou, Life ? The Saint and Sage 
 Have left it written on this page. 
 
 That thou art nothing — dust, a breathy 
 A glittering bubble burst by death, 
 
 A ray upon a rushing stream, 
 
 A thought, a vanity, a dream. 
 
THE EUTHANASIA. 
 
 Yet, tliOTi art given for mighty things, 
 To phime the infant Angels' wings, 
 
 To bid our waywardness of heart, 
 
 Like Mary, choose " the better part ;" 
 
 To watch, and weep our guilt away, 
 
 To-day, " while yet 'tis called to-day." 
 
 If sorrows come. Eternal God ! 
 
 By Thee the path of thorns was trod ; 
 If death be nigh, shall man repine, 
 
 To bear the pangs that once were Thine, 
 To bleed, where once Thy heart was riven. 
 And follow from the Cross to Heaven ? 
 
THE LAST DAY OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 The storming of Jerusalem by the Roman Army 
 was the mortal blow of the nation ; it thenceforward 
 lino:ercd on in an existence mingled of the severities 
 of a conquered people, and the scorn felt for a people of 
 slaves, until it was finally extinguished as a nation by 
 Hadrian. 
 
 The assault of the city is inexplicable but by 
 Scripture. The indifference of Rome to the pecu- 
 liarities of all foreign religions ; its natural reluctance 
 to the ruin of the subject states ; its prodigious power, 
 which relieved it from the necessity of punishing every 
 casual revolt of a province ; its calm, though stern, 
 system of government, and the absence of rivalry on 
 earth sparing it the passion of revenge, all rendered the 
 
 B 2 
 
SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Roman ruin of the most sacred city of Asia, and the 
 extermination of the most memorable people of the world, 
 wholly irreconcileable with the habitual policy of the 
 Empire. 
 
 Prophecy alone solves the great problem ; by showing 
 the ine\'itable result of corrupted religion, of degraded 
 discipline, of inveterate prejudice, and of insulted 
 long-suffering. But the condition of the Je^v^sh people, 
 while it appeals to our humanity, must not be lost 
 sight of by our reason. \M:iether the recovery of the 
 nation may be within the designs of Providence, or 
 it is to be finally absorbed into the population of the 
 earth, it is impossible to doubt that a high purpose 
 is accomplished by the present separation of the people. 
 WTierever a Jew exists, he is an evidence for the 
 tRith of Christianity ; an e\ddence stronger than 
 all other, from its being a reluctant one ; more 
 accessible than anv other, from the scatterinof of 
 the Jews through all nations ; and more permanent 
 than any other, from the features, the habits, and the 
 prejudices of the people. If the Jews had been con- 
 verted a thousand years ago, however we should rejoice in 
 their belief, we must have lost one of the most powerful 
 testimonies to our own, the living proof of prophecy. 
 
THE LAST DAY OF JERUSALEM. O 
 
 and thus the most direct, palpable, and irresistible 
 argument for Revelation. 
 
 The subject of the following hymn is from the well- 
 known passage of Tacitus. 
 
 " Evenerant prodigia, quai ueque hostiis neque votis piare fas habet gens, 
 superstitioiii obnoxia, religionibus adversa. 
 
 '• Visa; per ccelum concurrere acies,- rutulantia arma, et siibito nubium 
 igne collucere Templum. Expassae lepeute delubri fores, et audita major 
 humana vox, ' Excedere Deos.' Simul ingens motus excedentium."— 
 HiSTOR. Liber, v. 
 
 Flow on, for Zion — flow, my tears — 
 
 Thou sepulchre of sepulchres 
 
 Thy glory but a gorgeous dream, 
 
 Thy strength, a wasted suQimer stream ; 
 
 Thy turban cloven on the ground. 
 
 With all its jewels scattered round. 
 
 Age upon age, Captivity 
 
 Sits brooding on thy leafless tree ; 
 
 And where its branching glory stood. 
 
 Is shame, and agony, and blood. 
 
SCENES FHOM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Froui morn to eve, Rome's iron tide 
 Had dashed on Zion's haughty side ; 
 From morn to eve, the arrowy shower 
 Ilained on her ranks from wall and tower. 
 Now rose the shout of Israel ; 
 Now, like the sea's returning swell, 
 Rushed up the Mount the Roman charge, 
 Again beat back by Judah's targe ; 
 Strewing with helm and shield the hill ; 
 All wearied, but th' unconquered will. 
 
 'Twas eve, and still was fought the field. 
 Where none could win, and none would yield ; 
 Beneath the twilight's deepening shade 
 Echoed the clash of blade on blade. 
 Still rushing through the living cloud. 
 Its path the Lion-banner ploughed ; 
 And still the Eagle's fiery wing 
 Seemed from the living cloud to spring ; 
 Till Rome's retiring trump was blown. 
 Answered by shouts from Zion's throne. 
 
THE LAST DAY OF JERUSALEM. ' 
 
 That day the Roman learned to feel 
 The biting of the Jewish steel. 
 
 ^Twas uight. The sounds of earth were hushed, 
 Save where the palace-fountains gushed ; 
 Or from the myi'tle-breathing vale, 
 Sung, to the stars, the nightingale. 
 Splendid the scene, and sweet the hour ! 
 The moonbeam silvered tent and tower, 
 Touched into beauty grove and rill. 
 And crowned with lustre Zion's hdl. 
 
 All loveliness, but w^here the gaze 
 
 Shrank from the Roman camp-fire's blaze ; 
 
 All peaceful beauty, but where frowned, 
 
 Omen of woe, the Roman Mound ! * 
 
 ^Twas midnight ; ceased the heavy jar 
 Of rampart-chain and portal-bar ; 
 That hour of doom, on Zion's wall 
 No warrior's foot was heard to fall ; 
 
 * The Romans surrounded the city with a trench and a mound, ^^•hich 
 prevented all escape, and formed a characteristic of the siege 
 
SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 No murmui' of the mighty camp, 
 
 No cohort's tread, no chargei-^s champ, 
 
 Gave sign that Earth was living still ; 
 
 All hushed, as by a mightier Will ; 
 
 E\^n wounds that ^\Ting, and eyes that weep, 
 
 Were bound in one resistless sleep : 
 
 Silence of silence, all around ; 
 
 Hushed as the grave — a death of sound ! 
 
 What visioned forms, like things of dreams. 
 Or like the Pole's phosphoric streams, 
 Or the wan clouds of winter^s even, 
 Now marshal on the fields of Heaven, 
 There gleam, in clouds of spectral light, 
 The Camp, the Mound, th'embattled height ; 
 There moves the Legion's brazen line ; 
 Ill-omened Israel, where is thine ? 
 Rolls up the visioned Moimt the charge ; 
 But where the turban and the targe ? 
 The cohort climbs the visioned tower, 
 Yet sweeps its ranks no arrowy shower ; 
 
THE LAST DAY OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 Pale flames from visioued altars rise ; 
 Israi^j art thou the sacrifice ! 
 
 But sudden roars the thunder-peal, 
 
 The forests on the mountains reel. 
 
 And, like the burst of mountain springs, 
 
 Is heard a rush of mighty wings ! 
 
 And voices sweet of love and woe, 
 
 (Love, such as Spirits only know), 
 
 Swell from the Templets cloisters dim, 
 
 A mingled chaunt of dirge and hynm ; 
 
 Like grief, when help and hope have fled. 
 
 Like anguish o'er the dying bed ; 
 
 Like pulses of a breaking heart : 
 
 " We must depart, we must depart/' 
 
 And grandly o'er Moriah's height, 
 
 Encanopied in living light, 
 
 Rose to that chaunt of dirge and hymn 
 
 The squadrons of the Seraphim. 
 
 From Carmel's shore to Hebron's chain. 
 
 Shone in that splendour hill and plain ; 
 
10 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Still starlikc seemed the orb to soar, 
 Theu all was nighty and sleep once more. 
 
 Eut whence has come that sudden Hash, 
 
 And whence the shout, and whence the clash 
 
 The Legions scale the Temple wall ! 
 
 Its startled warriors fly or fall. 
 
 Now swells the carnage, wild and wide ; 
 
 Now dies the bridegroom by the bride; 
 
 Peasant and noble, parent, child, 
 
 In heaps of quivering carnage piled ; 
 
 On golden roof, on cedar floor. 
 
 Still flames the torch, still flows the gore ; 
 
 Hour of consummate agony, 
 
 When nations, God-deserted, die ! 
 
 Yet still the native dirk and knife 
 "Wrung blood for blood, and life for life. 
 The priest, as to the Veil he clung, 
 With dying hand the javehn fluna;; 
 The peasant on the Roman sprang, 
 Armed but with panther's foot and fang, 
 
THE LAST DAY OF JERUSALEM. 11 
 
 From his strong grasp the falchion tore, 
 And dyed it in the robber's gore. 
 That night who fought, that night who fell, 
 No eye might see, no tongue might tell ; 
 That sanguine record must be read 
 But when the grave gives up its dead ; 
 Then Judah's heart of pride was tame ; 
 The rest was sorrow, slavery, shame ! 
 — Jerusalem a name ! 
 
SUPPLICATION. 
 
 " If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." — Galatians v, 25. 
 
 Spirit of God ! descend upon my heart ; 
 
 Wean it from earth, though all its pulses move ; 
 Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art. 
 
 And make me love Thee, as I ought to love. 
 
 I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies. 
 
 No sudden rending of the veil of clay ; 
 No angel visitant, no opening skies; — 
 
 But take the dimness of the soul away. 
 
 Hast Thou not bid us love Thee, God and King ? 
 
 All, all thine own — soul, heart, and strength, and mind ; 
 I see Thy Cross — there teach my heart to cling : 
 
 O, let me seek Thee, — and Oh ! let me find ! 
 
SUPPLICATION. 13 
 
 Teach me to feel, that Thou art always nigh ; 
 
 Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear. 
 To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh ; 
 
 Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer. 
 
 I know Thee glorious ! might and mercy all, 
 
 All that commands Thy creatures' boundless praise ; 
 
 Yet shall my soul from that high vision fall. 
 Too cold to worship, and too weak to gaze ? 
 
 Teach me to love Thee, as Thine angels love, 
 
 One holy passion filling all my frame ; 
 The Baptism of the Heaven-descended Dove, 
 
 My heart an altar, and Thy Love its flame. 
 
ESTHER. 
 
 The Jews hold the History of Esther in remarkable 
 veneration. Some even regard it as entitled to equal 
 reverence with the Law of Moses, and say, " That when 
 all other Scriptures shall cease, this and the Pentateuch 
 will survive." 
 
 The Festival of Purim, in commemoration of the 
 rescue of the people from the bloody design of Haman, 
 is a sufficient evidence of the reality of this memorable 
 transaction. 
 
 "After these things did King Ahasucrus promote 
 Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and ad- 
 vanced him, and set his seat above all the princes. 
 
 *' And all the King's servants that were in the King's 
 gate, bowed, and reverenced Haman ; for the King had 
 
ESTHER. • 15 
 
 SO commanded concerning him : but Mordecai bowed 
 not, nor did him reverence. 
 
 " And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, 
 nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath. 
 
 " And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai 
 alone ; for they had showed him the people of Mordecai : 
 wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, that 
 were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even 
 the people of Mordecai." 
 
 "Then Esther the Queen answered and said, If I 
 have found favour in thy sight, O King, let my life be 
 given me at my petition, and my people at my re- 
 quest. 
 
 " For w^e are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, 
 to be slain, and to perish. 
 
 " Then the King Ahasuerus said unto Esther the 
 Queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume 
 in his heart to do so ? 
 
 " And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this 
 wicked Haman. 
 
 " And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said be- 
 fore the King, Behold also the gallows fifty cubits high, 
 which Haman had made for Mordecai, w^ho had spoken 
 good for the King, standeth in the house of Haman. 
 Then the King said, Hang him thereon. 
 
16 SCENES FROM SCRTPTURE. 
 
 " So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had 
 prepared for Mordecai. Then was the King's wrath 
 pacified." — Book of Esther vii, 1, &c. 
 
 The probable reason of Mordecai's refusing reverence 
 to Haman, was his being an Amalekite, or even a de- 
 scendant from the Amalekite kings, who had been 
 persecutors of the Jews, and who were denounced by 
 prophecy, as divinely doomed, for the punishment of 
 that persecution. 
 
 Morn is come, the purple morn, 
 Yet it looks on shapes forlorn : 
 On thy glittering roofs, Shushan, 
 There are mourners wild and wan ; 
 Eyes upturned^ dishevelled hair, 
 Brows unturbaned, bosoms bare ; 
 Hands in restless anguish wrung 
 By the grief that knows no tongue ; 
 Dust and ashes on the brow. 
 Kina; of Israel — where art Thou ? 
 
ESTHER. 
 
 17 
 
 Through the livelong winter's night, 
 Like tlie harvest in the blight ; 
 Like the reeds, by storms o'erthrown ; 
 Rank on rank, lay Israel strown. 
 Prostrate on their naked roofs. 
 Listening to the trampling hoofs, 
 Listening to the trumpet's clang. 
 As to horse the riders sprang ; 
 Bearing eacb the bloody scroll. 
 Slaying all things but the soul. 
 
 Every blast that trumpet gave 
 Was a summons to the grave ; 
 Every torch that hurried by 
 Told that myriads were to die ! 
 Myriads, in that midnight sleeping, 
 Where the Arab balms are weeping ; 
 Where along th' Ionian hill 
 Night-dews of the rose distil ; 
 By the Scythian mountain-chain ; 
 By the Ethiopian plain ; 
 
18 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 By the Iiuliau Ocean's roar, 
 
 By the farthest fiery shore, 
 
 Where the foot of man could tread ; 
 
 Where the Jew could hide his head ; 
 
 Where his heart could heave the groan ; 
 
 On the earth alone, alone ! 
 
 Son of the Captivity, 
 
 Vengeance winged that shaft for thee. 
 
 Judah, scattered, " spent and peeled," 
 
 In that hour thy doom was sealed ! 
 
 Still, the opening palace porch 
 Showed the troop, with trump and torch. 
 Thundering through the dusk beneath, 
 Each a messenger of death ; 
 Like a sanguine meteor rushing, 
 Light on tower and temple flushing ; 
 Till dispersed, the furious horde. 
 Like the fragments of a sword, 
 Like the lightning, scattered forth. 
 East, and West, and South, and North. 
 
ESTHER. 19 
 
 While the son of Israel's gaze 
 Watched the shooting of that blaze, 
 As o'er hill and plain it spread ; 
 Like the livid vapours fed, 
 Where the battle's remnants lie, 
 Withering to the stormy sky. 
 King of Israel, hear the prayer 
 Of Thy people, in despair ! 
 
 Yet, within thy courts, Shushan, 
 Stood that morn an ancient man : 
 On his high phylactery 
 Wisdom that can never die ; 
 On the motion of his hand. 
 Propped upon the ivory wand ; 
 On his step, though weak with age. 
 Stamped the Leader and the Sage. 
 
 Hark the shoutings ! In his pride, 
 Sullen-hearted, cruel-eyed, 
 With the signet of command 
 Glittering on his haughty hand. 
 
 c2 
 
20 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 With his barb's caparison 
 Dazzhng as an Indian throne, 
 Haman comes, of Lords the Lord, 
 Persia's buckler, Persia's sword ! 
 In his front the timbrels sounding, 
 Round his steed the dancers bounding-, 
 Roses flung beneath his tread, 
 Broidered banners o'er his head. 
 Chiefs, with jewelled shield and spear, 
 Flashing: round the dark Vizier. 
 
 But a pang of wrath and shame 
 Lights his cheek with sudden flame ! 
 One, above the prostrate crowd, 
 Like a pillar stands unbowed. 
 Day by day, that silent one, 
 Stood beside that portal-stone. 
 Scorning with the slave to stoop, 
 To the tyrant's viilture-swoop — 
 Scorning the hypocrisy 
 Of the captive's bended knee. 
 
ESTHER. 31 
 
 Bowino- only to the rod 
 
 01" his conscience, and his God 
 
 Day by day the tyrant's heart 
 Felt that scorn, a living dart ; 
 In his breast of pride and ire. 
 Scorpion sting, and serpent spire ! 
 Till the murderer's oath was sworn. 
 That the babe of Israel born. 
 Priest and Levite, matron, maid, 
 All should in their blood be laid — 
 All should in their graves atone. 
 That high glance, thou ancient one. 
 
 Now, from his deluded King, 
 Fraud had won the missive ring ; 
 Now, the seal of death was sent. 
 To the palace, to the tent — 
 Far as Persia's banners wave. 
 Far as Israel finds a grave, 
 Far as tears of blood are shed, 
 Was the gory mandate sped. 
 
23 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Now, in his triumphant hour 
 To tlie monarch's banquet bower, 
 In a tyrant's full-blown pride, 
 Rode the mighty Homicide. 
 
 Still, beside the portal-stone 
 Stood that old, unbending one ; 
 Still, beyond his fierce control. 
 Strong in majesty of soul. 
 On the tyrant's heart, his gaze 
 Fell like a consuming blaze. 
 Swelled in vain the loud " All hail !" 
 On his glance the pomp grew pale ; 
 Clashed in vain the shield and spear. 
 On his glance rose rack and bier. 
 In that ancient form, unbowed — 
 As the gathering of the cloud, 
 As the rushing of the gale, 
 As the forest's rising wail. 
 Tells the coming thunderstroke, 
 Kuni on the Satrap broke ! 
 
ESTHER. 
 
 23 
 
 Though that night his grasp might wring 
 Asia from his trusting King ; 
 Though the world's first diadem 
 On his haughty brow might beam ; 
 Yet his spirit's sudden thrill 
 Told him he was mortal still ; 
 At his feet he saw the tomb : 
 In that prophet-eye was doom ! 
 
 Night is on the Royal bower, 
 Roses on the couches shower ; 
 Soft, as from the opening skies, 
 Fall delicious harmonies ; 
 Flaming from a thousand urns, 
 Incense round the banquet burns 
 O'er the golden-sculptured roof. 
 Shooting from the eye aloof, 
 Till it seems another heaven, 
 Studded with the stars of even ; 
 Rich as an enchanted dream. 
 Thousand golden cressets gleam. 
 
24 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Grouped around the mighty hall 
 Indian dwarf, and Nubian tall, 
 Jewel-turbancd, tissue-robed, 
 Stand in dazzling light englobed ; 
 Stand the Syrian sons of song, 
 Stand the Grecian minstrel-throng. 
 All is pomp, and feast, and dance, 
 All is joy^s delicious trance ; 
 Empire's pleasure. Empire's power, 
 Centered in one matchless hour : 
 Still, there shrinks one eye of fear- 
 It is thine, thou dark Vizier ! 
 
 But, what sounds on midnight sail I 
 Hark ! a rush, a shriek, a wail. 
 Deepening to one death-like cry. 
 Like a wreck's last agony ; 
 Like the sounds that rend the air 
 In some city's last despair. 
 When upon her midnight wall 
 Rings the stormer's trumi)ct call ]' 
 
ESTHER. 
 
 25 
 
 Through the portals of the bower, 
 Israel, rush thy virgin flower ; 
 Like a halo round their Queen. 
 - Yet no festal smile is seen ; 
 Yet no tresses, pearl-entwined. 
 Play on the enamoured wind. 
 Dust and ashes on the head, 
 Faces veiled, unsandaled tread. 
 Breathe their lips a funeral hymn ; 
 All is dark, dishevelled, dim. 
 But, advancing to the throne, 
 From their circle moves, alone 
 Esther, palest of the pale ; 
 On her lip a trembling tale ; 
 In her step a woman^s fear. 
 On her cheek a woman's tear ; 
 But, within her glorious eye 
 Lustre lighted from the sky ; 
 Like an altar's flame, the sign 
 Of her hope and help Divine ! 
 
 Standing by the royal board, 
 In the cup the wine she poured ; 
 
26 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Then with eyes to Heaven upthrown. 
 Hushed within her heart the groan. 
 " B3' thy diadem and ring, 
 " Pledge thy bride, of kings thou king." 
 On the monarch's wondering gaze 
 Flashed her eye^s supernal blaze ; 
 Never, in love's richest hour. 
 Struck so deep her beauty's power ; 
 Never passion^s breathings stole 
 On his ear such chains of soul. 
 From her hand he took the wine — 
 " Empress, be my sceptre thine." 
 
 High to Heaven, with gesture grand, 
 Raised the Queen the golden wand : 
 " Who shall smite," she sternly cried, 
 " Age and childhood, maid and bride ? 
 " Who shall triumph, whom his ire 
 " Steeps in blood the son and sire ? 
 " Who shall point the traitor-sword, 
 " Aspic-like, to sting his Lord ? 
 " Kings' and jieopie's murderer — 
 " King, behold the tvaitor— there .'" 
 
ESTHER. 
 
 27 
 
 With the more than mortal sound 
 Kan^ the mighty hall aromid ! 
 
 Haman, boldest of the bold, 
 
 Felt his bm-ning blood run cold ; 
 
 Smote by Heaven, ambition, pride, 
 
 All the tiger in him died ; 
 
 On his lip one fearful cry, 
 
 In his heart one agony. 
 
 At the Monarch's footstool flung. 
 
 Still to abject life he clung ; 
 
 But he gnaws the dust in vain, 
 
 Earth abjures the living stain ! 
 
 From the royal footstool torn. 
 Through the shouting city borne ; 
 Now in fetters dragged to die, 
 Taunts and curses round him fly. 
 Now is paid the long arrear : — 
 Truths 'tis worse than death to hear ; 
 
28 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Wrongs, by terror forced to sleep ; 
 Wrongs, ^twas ruin but to weep ; 
 Wrongs, that rankled in the breast, 
 While the lip in smiles was drest ; 
 Wrongs, that, prostrate at his feet. 
 Made the hope of vengeance sweet ; 
 Wrongs, tbat pined to curse his name. 
 In the shout that fools call Fame. 
 Griefs, long nursed in shame and gloom, 
 Things that make the heart a tomb ; 
 Stings of soul, that slaves must hide. 
 Now find voices wild and wide ; 
 All the buried agonies 
 Now in living vengeance rise. 
 Thousands, who had kissed the ground, 
 At his courser's fiery bound ; 
 Thousands, piled on tower and roof. 
 Gazing on the scene aloof; 
 Thousands, rushing where he stands. 
 Shuddering in the headsman's hands. 
 Gasp to see the tyrant's fall ; 
 Fury, triumph, vengeance all ! 
 
ESTHER. 
 
 29 
 
 Yet, if there were still a pang ! 
 
 Hainan, through thy breast it sprang, 
 
 As the scaffold met thy glare. 
 
 Like a spectre in the air ; 
 
 On that scaffold, huge and high, 
 
 Mordecai was doomed to die ! 
 
 At the glance, the scorpion-thought 
 
 Through his frozen bosom shot. 
 
 " Yes, before this day was past, 
 
 " There he shouldst have looked his last ; 
 
 " There, on all beneath the sky, 
 
 " Should have closed his haughty eye. 
 
 " Now the shame, the blood, the groan, 
 
 " Madman, murderer, are thine own !" 
 
 But, who comes in royal state ? 
 Opes for whom the golden gate ? 
 Round his car, a moving throne, 
 Persia's royal trumpets blown ; 
 Hailed by Persia's Herald-throng, 
 Hailed by Israel's holiest song. 
 
30 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Ill tlie royal canopy; 
 Hallowed triumph in his eyc^ 
 Persia's Signet of command 
 Glittering on his ancient hand. 
 MoRDECAi ! that pomp is thine ; 
 Joy to ransomed Palestine ! 
 Now no more shall Judah lie, 
 Dreading, or to live, or die ! 
 In that hour was checked the flood. 
 Where the waves were Israel's blood ; 
 In that hour was broke the chain — 
 Israel shall be throned again ! 
 
SELF-EXAMINATION, 
 
 " Try me, God, and seek the ground of my heart : j)rove me, and examine 
 my thoughts. 
 
 " Look well, if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the 
 way everlasting." — Psalm cxxxix, 23 — 24. 
 
 Thou Lord of mercy and of might ! 
 
 My humbled heart behold ; 
 And give Thy Spirit's living light, 
 
 To search its inmost fold. 
 
 Against that heart's presumptuous sins 
 
 I fly to Faith and Prayer. 
 But where the Tempter's art begins, 
 
 0, save me, save me, there ! 
 
32 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Teach me to shun the first dark thought, 
 The wandering of the Will ; 
 
 Oh ! keep the soul Thy blood has bought, 
 And let uie serve Thee still. 
 
 When dreams of folly cloud my mind, 
 And prompt to sins unknown, 
 
 The dream dissolve, the chain unbind, 
 And make me all Thine own. 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 
 
 " Again the Devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and 
 showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. 
 
 " And saith unto Him : ' All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt 
 fall down and worship me.' 
 
 " Then saith Jesus unto him : ' Get thee hence, Satan ; for it is written, 
 thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.' " — 
 Matthew iv, 8. 
 
 The mountain is a blaze of light ! 
 Who stands upon its topmost height ? 
 His only robe the lightning, 
 His burning crown, his tossing wing; 
 Nor speav, nor sceptre, in his hand, 
 But, flashing from his eye, command ! 
 There, Tempter, towers the haughty frame, 
 That not the thunderbolt could tame ; 
 
34 SCEXES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Nor age on age's dreary flight. 
 Nor dungeons of eternal night : 
 In pride, in grandeur and despair, 
 There stands the Princedom of the Air, 
 
 Who stands upon the mountain's height ? 
 No form of majesty and might, 
 No splendours darting from his robe, 
 To startle, or to blast, the globe ; 
 But patience in his Heavenward eye, 
 Like one who came to toil, and die. 
 The Infant of the Virgin's womb — 
 He comes to make the Earth His tomb ; 
 Beneath the Pagan scourge to bleed. 
 To bear the sceptre of the reed ; 
 To wear the robe of mockeiy, 
 To meet the scorn, the taunt, the lie ; 
 To feel the tortures of the slave ; 
 Victor, yet victim, of the grave ! 
 With more than mortal anguish wan. 
 Stands, on that height, the Son of i\Ian ! 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 
 
 Twice had His holy strength been tried. 
 Twice had He smote the Tempter's pride ; 
 But uow along the desert-sand 
 Bursts, tempest-like, the wild command : 
 " Ye kingdoms, in your glory rise." 
 Earth hears it from her farthest skies. 
 
 From the chill Tartar's boundless plain, 
 From jewelled India's mountain-chain ; 
 From forest depth, and golden cave. 
 Beyond the Ocean's western wave ; 
 The visions of the Empires come, 
 Circling thy central glory, Rome ! 
 
 The wild command is heard once more ! 
 
 In panoply Earth's millions pour ; 
 
 As, borne upon the eagle's wings, 
 
 Rise the rich musterings of her kings ; 
 
 Helm, tm-ban, golden diadem. 
 
 Pour onward like a fiery stream. 
 
 On horse, on foot, on scythed car ; 
 
 The living hurricane of war ! 
 
 d2 
 
 35 
 
36 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 As rushed they on the Tempter's gaze 
 Arovmd him shot a broader blaze ; 
 The flash of triumph in his eye, 
 His words, the words of Victory ; 
 '' Man, wouhlst thou wear of crowns the crown, 
 • Worship its Lord ; the ^Vorld's thine own." 
 
 The grandeur of the God awoke ! 
 In sounds of death the Judgment broke : 
 " Satan avaunt !" — Despair, Despair, 
 Was in his groan, and shrinking glare ; 
 Prone on his face, the guilt-struck fell ! 
 The panther bounded at his yell. 
 The viper started from the spring. 
 The vulture rushed upon the wing. 
 The jackall cower'd beside the dead, 
 The hungry lion howled and fled. 
 The vision and the fiend were gone ! 
 There stood the Conqueror — alone. 
 
 But o'er the mountain's pinnacle. 
 What splendours upon splendours swell. 
 
THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 37 
 
 What more than mortal harmonies, 
 
 What clouds of more than incense rise ! 
 
 The shout of joy, the holy hymn, 
 
 Are from your lips, ye Seraphim ; 
 
 Your shout, your song-, " for Man forgiven," 
 
 Your King, Messiah, King of Heaven ! 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 
 
 " Now we see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face ; now know I 
 but in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am known." — 1 Corik- 
 
 THIANS XIII, 12. 
 
 God ! when I think upon Thy name, 
 
 No doubts before my spirit rise ; 
 I hear all Xature^s voice proclaim. 
 
 That Thou art great, and good, and wise. 
 Yet would I, if it were Thy will, 
 See Thy bright Image, brighter still. 
 
 The wandering eyes, the wandering ears. 
 
 The ill, '' sufficient to the day," 
 (Thing of temptation and of tears ; 
 
 Thine old inheritance of clay !) 
 On Man's weak spirit fix their chain, 
 And drag him do\\ n to Earth again. 
 
THE VISION OF GOD. 39 
 
 Give me the strong realities ; 
 
 (I know not how to form the prayer), 
 Of Angels' thoughts and Angels' eyes ! 
 
 Or if that be too high to dare. 
 Oh ! mould me to Thy mighty will, 
 " To commune with Thee, and be still/' 
 
 If Israel longed to see Thy face, 
 
 While roared the thunders of the Law ; 
 
 Shall we, who know Thee, God of Grace, 
 Shrink from Thy countenance in awe ? 
 
 While Saints below, and Thrones above, 
 
 Proclaim Thy mightiest title. Love ! 
 
 Impress Thy image on my mind ; 
 
 Let me but see Thee as Thou art ; 
 If mortal eyes at best are blind. 
 
 Let me behold Thee with my heart. 
 In Mercy and in Love be nigh, 
 Oh ! visit Thou, my mental eye ! 
 
40 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 But rest, thou ever restless soul ! 
 
 Thy feverish hours are %ing fast ; 
 The clouds before thee shall unroll, 
 
 The glorious vision shine at last ; 
 And thou, without a shade between, 
 Shalt see, as thou thyself art seen ! 
 
THE SIXTH SEAL. 
 
 " And I beheld, when he had opened the Sixth Seal ; and lo ! there was a 
 great earthquake, and the Sun became black as sackcloth of hau-, and the 
 Moon became as blood. 
 
 " And the Kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and 
 the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free- 
 man, hid themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains. 
 
 " And said to the mountains and rocks, ' Fall on us, and hide us from the 
 face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.' " — 
 Apocalypse vi, 12. 
 
 The hour is come ! The mighty Sun 
 Darts downward, hkc a blood-red shield. 
 
 Earth, has thy final day begun ? 
 Earth, has thy solid centre reeled ? 
 
 Why bursts the ocean on its shore ? 
 
 Howls tempest, tenfold thunders roar ! 
 
43 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Like foam along the sui'ges borne ; 
 
 Like leaves, when gusts of Autumn rise ; 
 From Heaven^s eternal Vine are torn 
 
 The StarSj the clusters of the skies. 
 The Moon, like barks by tempests driven, 
 Wanders her wild, blind way through Heaven. 
 
 No Chance has bid you rush, ye Winds ! 
 
 No Chance has bid those thunders roll ! 
 Whose are those earthquakes ? His who binds 
 
 The fetter on the struggling soul. 
 Ye lightnings ! yom-s is not the blaze ; 
 A mightier withers, smites, and slays ! 
 
 The thunder peals for overthrow ; 
 
 The ripening of a Workl of crime. 
 Thou crimsoned mass of wrong and woe, 
 
 Now comes the great, consummate time. 
 When thou shalt blaze from pole to pole — 
 Ashes and dust — a burning scroll. 
 
THE SIXTH SEAL. 
 
 43 
 
 Six thousand wild and weary years ^ 
 
 By Truth the sackcloth has been worn ; 
 The prize of Virtue chains and tears, 
 
 And Faith a stain, and Zeal a scorn ! 
 And gold and gems have paid the blow^ 
 That laid their glorious beauty low. 
 
 Earth's scourges — Heaven's avenging ire- 
 War, famine, pestilence, the chain. 
 
 All fruitless — scorned the prophet's fire. 
 The dungeon, nay, the grave, in vain ! 
 
 The sole inheritance of Time, 
 
 The hardened heart, the deeper crime. 
 
 Still, man makes fellow-man a slave ; 
 
 Still raves the livid Infidel ; 
 Still burthens Earth that 7nore than grave. 
 
 Dungeon of soul, the Convent cell ; 
 Still Idols are the gods of Rome. 
 But vengeance wakes ! — the hour is come ! 
 
44 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Who rides upon the whu-hvind ! 
 
 Who rushes, slaying and to slay ! 
 His Angels, Woe and Death, behiud, 
 
 Calling the vultures to their prey ! 
 I hear the desert lion roar, 
 Snuffing afar the feast of gore ! 
 
 Whose lifted sceptre smites earth's thrones ; 
 
 Whose glance eclipses star and sun ? 
 God ! shall we worship " stocks and stones \" 
 
 Come in Thy might ! " Thy will be done l" 
 And standing vipon sea and shore. 
 Proclaim that " Time shall be no more/' 
 
 Ye men of blasphemy and blood, 
 The sword is out, your reign is o'er; 
 
 Fierce caterers of the vulture's food. 
 
 Ye now shall gorge them with your gore. 
 
 Pay pang for pang, and gioan for groan ; 
 
 Tortures that tear, but not atone ! 
 
THE SIXTH SEAL. 
 
 45 
 
 And ye^ the most undone of all, 
 
 Who di-agged the martyr to the pyre ! 
 
 Call to the depths of ocean — call, 
 
 To quench within your breasts the fire. 
 
 Worse than the earthquake or the storm — 
 
 The sting of soul, th' undying worm ! 
 
 Aye, now ye hiow what 'tis to die ! 
 
 Howl to the mountains and the caves ; 
 Aye, fk on Heaven the frenzied eye ; 
 
 Plunge terror-stricken in your graves ! 
 Ye doomed ! the time is past for prayer ; 
 Your heart has but one word — despair ! 
 
 Wail to the skies, thou guilty globe ! 
 
 Wail, all thy wan-iors, all thy Kings ! 
 When ruin wraps thee like a robe, 
 
 T\Tien flame from all thy mountains springs, 
 And Ocean feels its burning breath. 
 All death — an Universe of Death ! 
 
THE POWER OF PRAYER. 
 
 " Unto Thee, I lift up mine eyes, Tliou that dwellest in the Heavens. 
 
 " Behold, even <is the eyes of servants look unto the hands of their 
 masters, and the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, even so our 
 eyes wait upon the Lord our God, till He have mercy upon us." — Psalm 
 cxxiii, 1 — 2. 
 
 Hast th(jii climbed ambition's height, 
 
 Man of genius, man of might ! 
 
 Seeing from thy lofty seat 
 
 All life's storms beneath thy feet. 
 
 Empire spread before thine eye. 
 
 Homage, fear, and flattery ; 
 
 All the sounds that reach thee there, — 
 
 Kneel, and seek the power of prayer. 
 
THE POWER OF PRAYER. 47 
 
 Hast thou iu life's lowliest vale, 
 Seen thy patient labours fail, 
 Felt ill-fortune's daily thrill 
 Waste thine energy of will. 
 Yet without revenge or hate, 
 Wouldst thou stand the stroke of fate ; 
 Wouldst thou bear, as Man should bear, — 
 Kneel, and seek the power of prayer ! 
 
 Hast thou, Man of intellect ! 
 
 Seen thy soaring spirit checked ; 
 
 Struggling in the righteous cause. 
 
 Champion of God's slighted laws. 
 
 Seen the slave, or the supine. 
 
 Win the prize that should be thine ; 
 
 Wouldst thou scorn, and wouldst thou sinire, — 
 
 Kneel, and seek the 'power of prayer. 
 
 Hast thou stood beside the bed. 
 Where the gentle Spirit fled ! 
 Sharer of life's hopes and fears. 
 Youth's first passion, love of years. 
 
48 
 
 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Saint on earth, and Saint above, 
 Life of life, and love of love. 
 Wouldst thou shun the last despair, — 
 Kneel, and seek the power of prayer ! 
 
BELSHAZZAR. 
 
 " Belshazzar, the King, made a great feast to a thousand of his Lords, and 
 drank wine hefore the thousand. 
 
 " Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the House 
 of God, which was in Jerusalem. 
 
 " They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and of silver, of brass and 
 of iron, of wood and of stone, 
 
 " In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over 
 against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the King's palace. 
 And the King saw the part of the hand that wrote." — 5. 
 
 " In that night was Belshazzar, the King of the Chaldeans, slain ; and 
 Darius, the Median, took the kingdom." — Daniel v, 30, 
 
 On the rushing, mighty River, 
 
 On the wide, night-covered plain, 
 
 Sounds the rattling of the quiver. 
 Sounds the trump — then dies again. 
 
50 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 There, in numbers without number, 
 Persia's hordes are pouring on. 
 
 Thou hast slept thy final slumber, 
 God- defying Babylon ! 
 
 On the city's thousand towers 
 
 Blaze a thousand festal fires ! 
 Squandering his hour of hours, 
 
 Guilty son of guilty sires, 
 There Belshazzar, with his lords, 
 
 To the timbrel's silvery chime, 
 Shoutings wild, and clash of swords, 
 
 Holds high feast to Baalim. 
 
 Tyrant, thou art in thy glory, 
 
 Asia's treasures round thee blaze. 
 Princes proud, and sages hoary. 
 
 Like a god upon thee gaze ; 
 Harmonies around thee winging ; 
 
 Beauty in her brightest bloom 
 To thy golden footstool clinging. 
 
 Yet, that throne shall be thy tomb ! 
 
BEI.SHAZZAR. 
 
 Hark ! what sudcleu burst of thunder 
 
 Shakes the hall, and heaves the ground ! 
 All are hushed in fear and wonder ; 
 
 There {^judgment in the sound ! 
 Conscience- struck, the crowned blasphemer. 
 
 Wild and wilder quaffs the wine : 
 " Shall I turn a coward dreamer. 
 
 When the living world is mine ! 
 
 "Bring the golden cups V he cries, 
 
 " Purchased by my father's sword. 
 " High to Baal fill the prize, 
 
 " Spite of Israel and his Lord !" 
 Still, with mortal anguish saddening, 
 
 Pledged he round his nobles all. 
 Ha ! but are his senses maddening ? 
 
 Clouds have filled the mighty hall ! 
 
 Tyrant ! now is run thy sand ! 
 
 Tyrant ! now is wove thy shroud ! 
 
 Sees he now a giant hand. 
 
 Darting from a fiery cloud ; 
 
 E 2 
 
 51 
 
52 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Through the midnight, murky air, 
 Flashiug ghastly on the throne, 
 
 Like a comet's blasting glare, 
 Mexe, Tekel, Perez, shone. 
 
 Now is heard his cry of terror : 
 
 "Bring the Priest, and bring the Seer !'^ 
 Crowding came, with magic miiTor, 
 
 Cyphered scroll, and mystic sphere, 
 All the sons of Sorcery ! 
 
 With the Idol in their van ; 
 Dark Egyptian, wild Chaldee, 
 
 Rushing on with shout and ban. 
 
 Now the human victims lie. 
 
 Embers in the altar's blaze ; 
 Now, the priests of blasphemj^. 
 
 Whirling, dance in mystic maze. 
 Vain the dance, the blood, the spell ! 
 
 Still, upon the burning stone 
 Glares the fearful oracle. 
 
 Still untold, unread, unknown ! 
 
BELSHAZZAR. 53 
 
 " Let the foul impostors die !" 
 
 Swells the roar from Prince and slave. 
 But, before their startled eye, 
 
 Like a vision from the grave, 
 Comes the man of Israel. 
 
 Still the fetters round him cling, 
 Yet his words, like arrows fell — 
 
 Woe to people, woe to King ! 
 
 " Number, number, weight, and measure ! 
 
 " Thou art numbered, weighed, undone. 
 " Life and empire, blood and treasure, 
 
 " All are lost, and all are won." 
 Instant on the dazzling wall 
 
 Stooped the cloud's supernal gloom, 
 Instant on the mighty hall 
 
 Sat the darkness of the tomb ! 
 
 Then the thunder pealed again. 
 
 But came, mingled with its roar, 
 Clang of cymbals, shouts of men. 
 
 From Euphrates' hollow shore 
 
54 
 
 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Comes the rushing charioteer ; 
 
 Showers the torch on shrine and throne. 
 Dark Belshazzar, lie thou there ! 
 
 Persia tramples Babylon ! 
 
MIDNIGHT. 
 
 " Yea, the darkness is no darkness with Thee ; but the night is as clear as 
 the day. The darkness and Hght are to Thee both alike." — Psalm cxxxix, 1 1 . 
 
 Gather, ye sullen thunder- clouds ; 
 
 Your wings, ye lightnings, wave, 
 
 Like spirits bursting from their shrouds. 
 
 And howl, thou wild and dreary storm, 
 
 Like echoes of the grave — 
 
 Sounds of the brothers of the worm. 
 
 Ay, wilder still, ye thunders, roll ; 
 Ye lightnings, cleave the ground : 
 Ye cannot shake the Christian soul. 
 
 In God^s high strength, it sits sublime. 
 Though Worlds were dust around. 
 Defying Chance, outliving Time. 
 
MALACHI. 
 
 The predictions of Malachi, which close the Book 
 of Prophecy, are remarkable for their especial threaten - 
 ings of national ruin. And yet the condition of Judsea, 
 at the time, was totally opposed to the prophecy. The 
 ruined Temple had been rebuilt, the national polity 
 was partially reformed, and the nation was restored 
 by the power, and placed under the protection, of Persia, 
 the dominant empire of the East. Nothing could 
 afford a more natural hope of continued prosperity, if 
 not of final independence. Yet, it was at this period, 
 that the prophet uttered the strongest menaces of 
 Divine wrath to come ; menaces which vvere not to be 
 fully accomplished for four hundred years, but which 
 we know to have been accomplished to the letter, in 
 the fall of the Nation. 
 
 It is not known whether the name in the original, 
 " My Angel," and so translated in the Septuagint, was 
 
MALACHI. O/ 
 
 adopted from his prophetic office. The prophets were 
 frequently called angels. Malachi is supjiosed to have 
 been of the tribe of Zabulon, to have been a member 
 of the great synagogue, and as such to have assisted 
 in reinstating the observance of the Law intermitted 
 during the Captivity. He certainly saw the rebuild- 
 ing of the Temple. He is said to have died young. 
 Four hundred years elapsed before the coming of 
 another prophet to Israel. 
 
 " For, behold, the day cometh that thou shalt burn as an oven : and all the 
 proud, ye and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble. And the day that 
 cometh shall biu-n them up, saith the Lord of Hosts ; that it shall leave 
 them neither root nor branch." — 1, 2. 
 
 " But, unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, 
 with healing on his wings. 
 
 " Behold, I ^N-ill send you Elijah, the Prophet, before the coming of the 
 Great Day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the 
 children, and the heart of the children to their fathers." — Malachi hi, 1, &c. 
 
 A SOUND on the rampart, 
 A souud at the gate ! 
 
 I hear the roused lioness 
 Howl to her mate : 
 
58 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Ill the thicket; at midnight^ 
 
 They crouch for the prey, 
 That shall glut their red jaws, 
 
 At the rising of day. 
 For wrath is descending 
 
 On Zion^s proud tower ; 
 It shall come like a cloud, 
 It shall wrap like a shroud. 
 Till, like Sodom, she sleeps 
 
 In a sulphurous shower. 
 
 For, behold ! the day conieth, 
 
 "When all shall be flame. 
 Thy robe shall be sackcloth, 
 
 Thy glory be shame. 
 When thy tree by the lightnings 
 
 From Earth shall be riven. 
 When thy bark o'er the billows 
 
 Of death shall be driven ; 
 When the oven, unkindled 
 
 By mortal, shall burn, 
 
MALACHI. 
 
 And, like chaff, thou shall glow 
 In that furnace of woe, 
 And, dust as thou art, 
 Thou to dust shalt return. 
 
 59 
 
 Thou shalt die, and yet know not 
 
 The rest of the grave ; 
 Thou shalt live, and yet live 
 
 To be only a slave ! 
 Thou shalt die, and yet shrink 
 
 At thy conqueror's tread ; 
 Thou shalt live, yet the sword 
 
 With thy carnage be fed ! 
 The pilgrim of nations ! 
 
 Still destined to roam. 
 On thy neck, on thy brain, 
 Still feeling the chain. 
 And, though wandering through Earth, 
 
 Never finding a home ! 
 
60 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE, 
 
 As the surges of war 
 
 O^er Earth's diadems roll, 
 Still, Judah, the iron 
 
 Shall enter thy soul ; 
 The Eagle, the Cross, 
 
 And the Crescent, shall shine. 
 But, Earth shall awake 
 
 To no banner of thine ! 
 Thy morning in sorrow. 
 
 Thy evening in fear. 
 They shall rise, they shall fall, 
 Thou the serf of them all ! 
 Thy haunt be the dungeon. 
 
 Thy bed be the bier. 
 
 'Tis the darkness of darkness. 
 The midnight of soul ! 
 
 No moon on the depths 
 
 Of that midnight shall roll ; 
 
 No starlight shall pierce 
 
 Through that life-chilling haze 
 
MALACHl. 
 
 61 
 
 No torch from the roof 
 Of the Temple shall blaze. 
 
 But, when Israel is buried 
 To final despair, 
 
 From a height o'er all height, 
 
 God of God, Light of Light, 
 
 Her Sun shall arise. 
 
 Her Redeemer be there ! 
 
 Who rushes from Heaven ? 
 
 The Angel of Wrath ! 
 The whirlwind his wing. 
 
 And the hghtning his path ; 
 His hand is uplifted. 
 
 It carries a sword ; 
 'Tis Elijah ! he heralds 
 
 The march of his Lord ! 
 Sun 1 sink in eclipse. 
 
 Earth, Earth, shalt thou stand, 
 When the cherubim wings 
 Bear the King of all Kings. 
 
G2 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Woe, woe to the Ocean, 
 Woe, woe, to the Land ; 
 
 Then the sparkles of flame, 
 
 From His chariot-wheels hurled, 
 Shall smite the crowned brow 
 
 Of the God of this World ; 
 Then, captive of ages ! 
 
 The trumpet shall thrill 
 From the lips of the Seraph, 
 
 On Zion^s proud hill ! 
 For, vestured in glory, 
 
 Thy Monarch shall come, 
 And from dungeon and cave 
 Shall ascend the pale slave ; 
 Lost Judali shall rise, 
 
 Like the soul from the tomb ! 
 
 ^Tis the day long foretold, 
 ^Tis the judgment begun ; 
 
 Gird Thy sword. Thou most Mighty, 
 Thy triumph is won ; 
 
MALACHI. G3 
 
 The idol shall burn 
 
 In his own gory shrine, 
 Then, daughter of anguish, 
 
 Thy dayspring shall shine ! 
 Loved Zion, thy vale 
 
 With the vineyard shall bloom, 
 And the musk-rose distil 
 Its sweet dews on thy hill ; 
 For Earth is restored — 
 
 The Great Kingdom is come ! 
 
 ^F 
 
A DIRGE. 
 
 " I will ransom them from the power of the Grave. I will redeem them 
 from Death. Death ! I will be thy plague. Grave ! I will be thy 
 destruction." — Hosea xiv, 14. 
 
 "Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 
 
 Here the evil and the just, 
 
 Here the youthful and the old, 
 
 Here the fearful and the bold ; 
 
 Here the matron and the maid 
 
 In one silent bed are laid ; 
 
 Here the warrior and the king, 
 
 Side by side, lie withering : 
 
 Glory, but a broken bust : 
 
 " Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 
 
A DIRGE. 
 
 65 
 
 Age on age shall roll along 
 O'er this pale and mighty throng ; 
 Those that wept them, those that weep, 
 All shall with the sleepers sleep ; 
 Prince and peasant, lord and slave, 
 Moving onward, wave on wave, 
 Till they reach the sullen shore. 
 Where their murinuriugs are o'er. 
 Here the spade, and sceptre, rust : 
 " Earth to earth, and dust to dust \" 
 
 But, a day is coming fast, 
 Earth, thy mightiest and thy last — 
 All shall see the Judgment-Sign, 
 On the clouds the Cross shall shine ; 
 Angel-myriads on the wing; 
 Earth upgazing on its King; 
 Heaven revealed to mortal sight, 
 Earth enshrined in living light; 
 Kingdom of the ransomed Just ! 
 "Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 
 
66 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Then shall dawn immortal day ; 
 Death and Sin no more have sway ; 
 Then shall in the Desert rise 
 Fruits of more than Paradise ; 
 Earth by angel feet be trod, 
 One great Garden of her God. 
 Earth no more the vale of tears, 
 Satan chained a thousand years. 
 Now in hope of Him we trust: 
 " Earth to earth, and dust to dust !" 
 
BALAK AND BALAAM. 
 
 " And it came to pass on the morrow, that Balak took Balaam, and 
 brought him up into the high places of Baal, that he might see the utmost 
 part of the people. 
 
 " And he returned unto him, and he stood by his burnt sacrifice, he and 
 all the princes of ^loab. 
 
 " Ccme, curse me, Jacob, and come, defy Israel. 
 
 " How shall I curse whom God hath blessed, or how shall I defy whom 
 God hath not defied ?" — 8. 
 
 " And when he came to him, behold he stood by his burnt offering, and all 
 the princes of Moab with him ; and Balak said unto him, ' What hath the 
 Lord spoken r' " — 17. 
 
 " Then he took up his parable, and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath 
 said : 
 
 " I shall see him, but not now. There shall come a star out of Jacob, and 
 a sceptre shall rise out of Israel." — Numbers xxiii. 
 
 Upon the hill the Prophet stood, 
 
 King Balak, in the rocky vale ; 
 
 Around him, like a fiery flood, 
 
 Flashed to the sun his men of mail. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 ^Twas i\Ioni — 'twas Noon — the Sacrifice 
 Still rolled its sheeted flame to Heaven, 
 
 Still on the Prophet turned their eyes ; 
 Nor yet the fearful Curse was given, 
 
 'Twas Eve — the flame was feeble now, 
 Was dried the victim's burning blood 
 
 The sun was sinking broad and low. 
 King Balak by the Prophet stood. 
 
 " Now, curse, or die \" The echoing roar 
 Around him, like a tempest came ; 
 
 Again the altar streamed with gore, 
 And flushed asram the skv with flame. 
 
 The Prophet was in prayer ; he rose, 
 His mantle from his face was flung ; 
 
 He listened, where the mighty foes 
 
 To Heaven their evening anthem sung. 
 
BALAK AND BALAAM. 69 
 
 He saw their camp, like sunset clouds, 
 Mixed with the Desert^s distant blue ; 
 
 Saw on the plain their marshalled crowds. 
 Heard the high strain their trumpets blew. 
 
 '' Young lion of the Desert sand," 
 Burst from his lip the Prophet-cry, 
 
 '•' What strength before thy strength shall stand 
 What hunter meet thee, but to tiy ? 
 
 " Come, Heaven-crowned Lord of Palestine, 
 Lord of her plain, her mountain throne ; 
 
 Lord of her olive and her vine : 
 
 Come, King of Nations, claim thine own. 
 
 " Be Israel cursed !" was in his soul, 
 But on his lip the wild words died ; 
 
 He paused, till night on Israel stole ; 
 Still was the fearful .curse untried. 
 
70 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Now wilder ou bis startled ear, 
 
 From jNIoab^s hills aud valleys dim. 
 
 Rose the fierce clash of shield and spear. 
 Rose the mad yells of BaaHm. 
 
 " How shall I cm-se, whom God hath blest ? 
 
 With whum he dwells, with whom shall dwell V 
 He clasped his pale hands ou his breast ; 
 
 " Then be thou blest, 0, Israel !" 
 
 A whirlwind from the Desert rushed, 
 Deep thunders echoed round the hill. 
 
 King, Prophet, multitude, were hushed ! 
 The thunders sank, the blast was still 
 
 Broad on the East, a newborn Star, 
 
 On cloud, vale, desert, pom-ed its blaze. 
 
 The Prophet knew the Sign afar. 
 And on it fixed his shuddering gaze. 
 
BALAK AND BALAAM. 71 
 
 " I shall behold Him — bvit not now; 
 
 I shall behold Him, but not nigh. — 
 He comes, beneath the Cross to bow, 
 
 To toil, to triumph, and to die. 
 
 " All power is in His hand ; the "World 
 Is dust beneath His trampling heel. 
 
 The thunder from His lips is hurled, 
 The heavens beneath His presence reel. 
 
 " He comes a stranger, to His own ; 
 
 With the wild bird and fox He lies. 
 The King, who makes the stars His throne, 
 
 A wanderer lives, an outcast dies ! 
 
 " Lost Israel ! on thy diadem 
 
 What blood shall for His blood be poured ? 
 Torn from the earth, thy royal stem, 
 
 Victim of famine, chain and sword." 
 
72 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 The Prophet paused, iu awe ; — the Star 
 Rose broader on the boimdless plain, 
 
 Flashing on Balak^s marshalled war, 
 On mighty Israel's farthest vane. 
 
 And sweet and solemn echoes riowed_, 
 From harps of more than mortals given. 
 
 Till ni the central cope it glowed. 
 
 Then vanished in the heights of Heaven ! 
 
EZEKTEL. 
 
 EzEKiEL was a captive in Babylon, carried thither 
 at the period of Jeconiah's imprisonment, (about 
 A.M. 3406). He was placed, with many of his 
 fellow captives, on the Chebar, a tributary of the 
 Euphrates. 
 
 Ezekiel was of the sacerdotal race, of the tribe of 
 Levi, and of the Hne of Aaron. He is supposed to 
 have prophesied during twenty-one years. His style 
 is mystical, but singularly vigorous; and he must 
 have contributed largely to the consolation of his 
 captive countrymen, and their adherence to Judaism 
 during their affliction in Mesopotamia. 
 
 The veneration of the Jews for his memory was 
 of the most unbounded order. He was thus said, 
 to be buried in the same sepulchre with the Patriarcli 
 
74 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Arphaxad, or even with Shem. The Medes and 
 Persians undoubtedly paid great honour to his remains ; 
 and even Western philosophy was presumed to have 
 derived some of its wisdom from this great Prophet. 
 It is certain, that Pythagoras visited Babylon during 
 the Captivity, and probable, that the Nazaretus (whether 
 a national or a personal name), from whom he received 
 the knowledge of the Mosaic Law, was Ezekiel ; who 
 must have been always a Master of Israel. 
 
 " Moreover, take thou up a lamentation for the princes of Israel. 
 
 " And say, what is thy mother .' a lioness. 
 
 " And she brought up one of her whelps, a young lion. It devoured men. 
 
 " And they brought him in chains into the land of Egypt. 
 
 " Then she took another of her whelps, and he learned to catch the prey, 
 and devoured men. 
 
 " And he knew their desolate palaces, and he laid waste their cities. 
 
 " And they put him in ward in chains, and brought him to the King 
 of Babylon." — Ezekiel xix, 1. 
 
 The lion-whelps were Jehoahaz and Johoiakim, the 
 former of whom was made captive by the King of Egypt, 
 the latter by the King of Babylon. 
 
EZEKIEL. 75 
 
 Israel, was a lioness ! 
 
 Mother of a lion brood, 
 Training in her fierce caress. 
 
 All her whelps to gorge on blood. 
 Red the surge of Jordan ran, 
 For their fearful meal was Man ! 
 
 One she sent, a forest king, 
 Rushing over hill and plain, 
 
 Rapid as the eagle's wing. 
 
 Scorning lance, defying chain ; 
 
 Hebron's mountains heard his roar. 
 
 Heard it Jordan^s sedgy shore. 
 
 Sharp the talon, tierce the fang. 
 When his lair the hunter found. 
 
 When he on the hunter sprang, 
 Making all the ma^ a wound. 
 
 But her lion-whelp is gone. 
 
 Chained to Egypt's tyrant throne ! 
 
SCENES PROM SCRIPTURE, 
 
 Then from IsraeFs lion-den 
 Rushed another of her brood. 
 
 Ambushed in his mountain glen, 
 Hate his thirst, Revenge his food ; 
 
 Loving night, and shunning day. 
 
 Keen to scent, and strong to sla}^ 
 
 Laying waste the palace hall. 
 Laying waste the city gate, 
 
 Glutting his revenge ou all ; 
 
 Dark as Death, and fixed as Fate. 
 
 Slaughter tainted earth and air. 
 
 Round that lion^s mountain lair ! 
 
 Tore his fang the serpent's scale ? 
 
 Chased his foot the flying deer ? 
 No, the monarch in his mail. 
 
 No, the biting of the spear, 
 Only worthy of his spring. 
 Banqueted the forest king ! 
 
EZEKIEL. 11 
 
 But the nations round him rose. 
 And the iron net was flung 
 
 By the noblest of thy foes, 
 
 O'er the fiercest of thy young. 
 
 Now his fetter is undone ; 
 
 Death is lord— in Babylon ! 
 
THE EVENING STAR. 
 
 " Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades, or loose the bands 
 of Orion ? 
 
 " Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season ? or canst thou guide 
 Arctiu^s with his sons ? 
 
 " Knowest thou the ordinances of Heaven ? Canst thou set the dominion 
 thereof in the earth ?" — Job xxxviii, 31. 
 
 Tell us, thou glorious Star of Eve ! 
 
 ^Y}lQ.t sees thine eye ? 
 AVherever human hearts can heave, 
 
 Plan's misery ! 
 Life, but a weary chain, 
 Manhood, weak, wild, and vain. 
 Age, but a lingering pain. 
 
 Longing to die ! 
 
THE EVENING STAR. 79 
 
 Tell us, tliou glorious Star of Eve, 
 
 Sees uot thine eye 
 Some spot where hearts no longer heave. 
 
 In tliine own sky ? 
 Where all life's dreams are o'er. 
 Where bosoms bleed no more. 
 Where injured Spirits soar, 
 
 Never to die. 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 " In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of 
 Jndaea. 
 
 " And saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 
 
 " And the same John had his raiment of camels' hair. 
 
 " Then went out to liim Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region 
 round about Jordan. 
 
 " But, when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his 
 baptism, he said unto them : 0, generation of vipers, who hath warned you 
 to flee from the wrath to come ? 
 
 •• But He that cometh after me is mightier than I. 
 
 '• Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His lloor." — 
 Matthew hi, 1. 
 
 The mission of the Baptist was a great moral Revo- 
 lution. In the forms of Judaism, the people had almost 
 totally forgotten the principles of religion. Those forms 
 were necessar)', while the Jews w^ere alone entinisted with 
 revelation ; they became hazardous when that guardian- 
 
THE BAPTIST. 81 
 
 ship became unnecessary. The chief charge made 
 on the nation by our Lord, is the result of that 
 hazard — hypocrisy. 
 
 The preacliing of John proclaimed a " kingdom," 
 in which the spirit of religion was to supersede its 
 formalities. His only doctrine was, that the kingdom 
 of Clirist was at hand ; and his only precepts w^ere, the 
 duties of every class of mankind. 
 
 The National Baptism in the river Jordan was the 
 correlative act of the National Baptism in the Red Sea, a 
 sign that the people were called to a new condition of 
 moral existence, that they were to cast off the habits of 
 Jewish prejudice, as their fathers had cast off the habits 
 of Egyptian superstition, and that they were to prepare 
 by this Baptism for a total change of mind. — ([/.etmo'kh) . 
 
 With that profound reference to the past, which 
 forms one of the finest testimonies of Scripture, John 
 was to Christ, what Aaron was to Moses — the elder 
 born, the first proclaimer of the Mission, the first to 
 die — both John and Aaron dying before they came 
 in sight of success — both the greatest of their time, 
 excepting the two leaders of Judaism and Chi'istianity, 
 who alone conversed with Jehovah face to face, the 
 deliverers of the Law and the Gospel; the Mediator 
 of Israel, and the Mediator of the World. 
 
82 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Why rush the wild thousands 
 
 From Salem's proud towers ? 
 Wliy rush the wild thousands 
 
 From Jericho^s bowers ? 
 From the vine-covered valley, 
 
 The olive-hilFs side. 
 From the cot, from the palace, 
 
 Still rushes the tide ! 
 The priest and the warrior. 
 
 The lord and the slave ; 
 
 Still onward they pour 
 
 To the willow-wreathed shore. 
 Where the Wilderness glitters 
 
 With Jordan's bright wave. 
 
 What seek they ? A prince. 
 
 In his tunic of gold ! 
 What seek they ? A chief, 
 
 Like their warriors of old. 
 When the Maccabee scythe 
 
 Mowed the Syrian's mailed hordes, 
 
THE RAPT I ST. 83 
 
 And Arabia was tame 
 
 At the blaze of their swords. 
 But the Heaven-doomed Roman 
 
 Has levelled the throne ; 
 
 And like dust on the gale, 
 
 And like rust on the mail, 
 The old lion-banner 
 
 Is shattered and 2:one. 
 
 Hark ! the shouts of the host 
 
 As they sweep o'er the plain ; 
 See their gesture of triumph, 
 
 Their glance of disdain. 
 " All hail to the Prophet ! 
 
 Four hundred long years 
 Have scourged us with scorpions, 
 
 Have steeped us in tears. 
 But, the kingdom is coming. 
 
 Its Herald has come. 
 
 Now the Roman shall feel 
 
 The tramp of our heel, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 SCENES FROM SCRIPTUKE. 
 
 And the gods of the Gentile 
 Shall plunge in the tomb." 
 
 'Tis the Prophet of prophets, 
 
 For ages foretold,, 
 Of the race that the thunders 
 
 O'er Palestine rolled. 
 With a voice that now saves. 
 
 And a voice that now stings, 
 Rebuker of people, 
 
 Rebuker of kings. 
 His eye like the flash. 
 
 As it darts from the cloud. 
 
 The camels'-hair fold 
 
 Round his limbs' giant mould. 
 And a forehead, to all but Jehovah unbowed. 
 
 He speaks — all are hushed. 
 
 On his lip burns the coal ; 
 The flame from the altar. 
 
 The voice of the soul ! 
 
THE BAPTIST. 
 
 " Ho ! leaders of Israel, 
 
 Blind guides of the blind, 
 With madness before you, 
 And vengeance behind ; 
 Kepent, for the time 
 Of Messiah is nigh ; 
 For the firebrand shall glow 
 O'er your city of woe, 
 And the axe at the root 
 Of your grandeur shall lie. 
 
 "Why comes the proud Pharisee, 
 
 Scorn in his eye ? 
 Why comes the proud Sadducee, 
 
 Looking a lie ? 
 Ye sons of the hypocrites. 
 
 Howl in despair. 
 Ye kindi-ed of Spoil, 
 
 In its doom ye shall share. 
 For the harvest is gathered. 
 The fan m the hand, 
 
 85 
 
86 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Ye bosoms of stone, 
 Ye infidels, groan ; 
 In the day of His vengeance, 
 What mortal shall stand ? 
 
 " He stoops from His throne, 
 Yet, is mighty to save ; 
 
 The prisoner of Death, 
 
 Yet, the Lord of the Grave ! 
 
 The King of all Kings 
 As a slave shall expire. 
 
 But his words shall be Spirit, 
 His Baptism be fire. 
 
 Then Judah shall perish 
 In famine and gore. 
 Till the trumpet shall sound, 
 And the dead be unboimd. 
 
 And Messiah be Monarch, 
 And Time be no more." 
 
THE PROPHECY OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 Jerusalem, since the fall of its nation, has under- 
 gone more vicissitudes, each a new calamity, than any 
 city of the world, excepting Rome. The chief distinc- 
 tion being the remarkable one, that Rome has been 
 chiefly in the possession of Romans, but Jerusalem 
 has never been in the possession of Jews. I now 
 give a brief chronology of those vicissitudes. 
 
 A.D. 70. Jerusalem was stormed by the Romans, 
 with immense slaughter, her people sold as slaves, and 
 the national power extinguished. The city, for seventy 
 years, remained a Roman fortress. 
 
 A.D, 135. After the rebellion of Barchochebas, which 
 was punished by a havoc, almost approaching to exter- 
 mination, Jerusalem was made a Roman colony. Jews 
 were prohibited, on pain of death, from dwelling within 
 
88 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 her walls. IdolatiT was established, a temple was 
 dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus, on Mount Moriah, 
 and the very name of the city was extinguished in 
 a name adopted from the destroyer ; Jerusalem was 
 thenceforth ^lia Capitolina. 
 
 A.D. 614. The Persians invaded Syria, and stormed 
 Jerusalem, with great slaughter. Under the lenient 
 government of the first Constantine and his successors, 
 Jews had been allowed to dwell in the City, but were 
 thus only the more exposed to the \'iolence of its bar- 
 barian conquerors. After the retreat of the Persians, 
 the Greek Emperor resumed the possession, and held it, 
 though with difficulty, until the Mahometan invasion. 
 
 A.D. 637. The " Great Caliph," Omar, captured 
 Jerusalem, and built, on the site of the Temple, the 
 Mosque that still bears his name. 
 
 During the four centuries which followed, the City 
 was still subject to Mahometans, and the prize of the 
 Saracen rivals. It was wrested from the Caliphs of 
 Bagdad by the Caliphs of Eg}'pt, by them from the 
 Turcomans, and from them again by the Caliphs of 
 Egypt, The misery sustained by the Jews in those 
 barbarian revolutions, for they always clung to Jemsa- 
 lem, must have l)een incalculable. 
 
 A.D. 1099. A memorable cnemv now entered the 
 
THE PUOPHECY OF JERUSALEM. 89 
 
 field, and increased the calamities of the people. The 
 Crusaders, under Godfrey of Bouillon, invaded Pales- 
 tine, and after a siege of forty days, took Jerusalem, 
 (15th July), gave up the city to massacre and held 
 it for eighty- eight years. 
 
 A.D, 1187. Palestine was overrun by the famous 
 Caliph Saladin. The City next fell successively into the 
 hands of the Emperor Frederic, of the Emir David 
 of Kerek, of the Kharismians, of the Mameluke Sultans, 
 and of the Turks. On the rise of Mehemet Ali, the 
 late Pacha of Egypt, it was seized in his invasion of 
 Syria, but rescued from him in 1841, by an Enghsh 
 armament, and given back to the Turks. 
 
 Since then, a Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem has 
 been appointed by the joint patronage of the British 
 and Prussian Governments, confirmed by the Firman 
 of the Ottoman Porte. 
 
 This may be the foundation of a mighty change. 
 It is the step on the threshold — the feeble dawn 
 — the first whisper of truth heard in the silence of 
 centui'ies. 
 
90 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 ^TwAS Eve on Jerusalem ! 
 
 Glorious its glow, 
 On the vine-covered plain, 
 
 On the Mount-'s marble brow ; 
 On the Temple's broad grandeur, 
 
 Enthroned on its height, 
 Like a golden-domed isle 
 
 In an ocean of light ; 
 And the voice of her multitude 
 
 Rose on the air. 
 From the vale deep and dim. 
 Like a rich evening hymn. 
 But, whence comes that cry ? 
 
 ^Tis the cry of despair ! 
 
 Who stands upon Zion ? 
 
 The Prophet of Woe ! 
 His frame worn with travel. 
 
 His locks, Uving snow. 
 His hand grasps a trumpet. 
 Its sound gives a thrill 
 To each heart of the thousands ! 
 
THE PROPHECY OF JEKUSALEM. 91 
 
 The life-blood runs chill, 
 
 At that death-sounding blast ! 
 
 All fixing their gaze, 
 
 Where, like one from the tomb, 
 The shroud seems to swim 
 Round the long, spectral limb, 
 And the ashy lip quivers 
 
 With judgment to come. 
 
 " Thou'rt lovely, Jerusalem ; 
 
 Lovely, yet stained ; 
 A Queen among nations, 
 
 Yet thou shalt be chained. 
 Thou'rt magnificent, Zion. 
 
 Yet thou shalt be lone. 
 The Pilgrim of sorrow ! 
 
 I see thy last stone. 
 
 " Hark, hark to the tempest ! 
 
 What roar fills mine ear ? 
 'Tis the shout of the warrior, 
 
 The storm of the spear. 
 
93 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 The Eagle and Wolf 
 
 On that tempest are rolled, 
 
 Twin demons of havoc, 
 To ravage thy fold. 
 
 " They rush through the land, 
 
 As through forests the fire ; 
 Woe, woe to the infant, 
 
 Woe, woe to the sire. 
 Rejoice for the w^arrior 
 
 Who sinks to the grave ; 
 But weep for the living, 
 
 A ransomless slave ! 
 
 " But veiled be mine eyeballs. 
 
 The red torch is flung, 
 And the last dying hymn 
 
 Of the Temple is sung ; 
 The Altar is vanished. 
 
 The glory is gone. 
 The vial is poured, 
 
 The high vengeance is done ! 
 
THE PROPHECY OF JERUSALEM. 93 
 
 " Again all is silence, 
 
 But still the death -pall, 
 The flag of the Roman, 
 
 Is hung from the wall. 
 But the archers are coming, 
 
 Their shafts hide the heaven, 
 And the Eagle's proud breast 
 
 By the Persian is riven. 
 
 " Hark ! a sound from the South, 
 
 ^Tis the echo of doom, 
 It comes from the Desert, 
 
 The li\dng Simoom ! 
 As fierce as its sun, 
 
 And as wild as its sand ; 
 'Tis Amrou and his Saracens, 
 
 Curse of the land ! 
 
 " Like the swamp-gendered hornets, 
 
 They rush on the wing. 
 By thousands of thousands, 
 
 AYith Death in their sting. 
 
94 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Like vultures, they sweep 
 O'er Moriah's loved hill, 
 
 And the corpse-covered valley 
 Of Cedron's red rill. 
 
 " Like the clouds on the mountains, 
 
 Like waves on the shore, 
 On sweep the swift chargers, . 
 
 Whose hoof is in gore ; 
 And Israel has fled 
 
 To the hill and the cave ; 
 With slaveiy behind her. 
 
 Before her the grave. 
 
 " And the clashing of lances 
 
 And shaking of reins, 
 Are the sounds of the morning 
 
 On Galilee's plains ; 
 And the Desert tambour. 
 
 And the Desert-horn shrill, 
 Are the sounds of the sunset 
 
 On Zion's loved hill. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF JERUSALEM. 95 
 
 *' Where, where sleeps the thunderbolt ? 
 
 Heaven ! hear the cries 
 Of the Ishmaelite slave, 
 
 To his Prophet of lies ; 
 Hear the howl to his demons, 
 
 His frenzy of prayer ; 
 And, hear Israel's lament 
 
 Of disdain and despair ! 
 
 '' It has come ! in the saddle 
 
 The robber has reeled, 
 And the turbans are floating 
 
 In blood on the field. 
 I see the proud Chiefs 
 
 Of the Cross in their mail ; 
 And my soul loves the standard 
 
 They spread to the gale. 
 
 " Stay, vision of splendour ! 
 
 On Jordan's broad marge. 
 They rush to the battle. 
 
 Earth shakes with their charge. 
 
96 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Like lightning the blaze 
 
 From their -panoply springs ; 
 
 I see the gold helms 
 
 And crowned banners of Kings. 
 
 " Yet, evil still smites thee, 
 
 Thou daughter of tears ! 
 No trophy is thine, 
 
 In the shock of the spears. 
 The stately Crusader, 
 
 And Saracen lord. 
 But give thee the choice 
 
 Of the chain, or the sword ! 
 
 " Again all is silence. 
 
 The long grass has grown 
 Where the Cross-bearer sleeps, 
 
 In his rich-sculptured stone ; 
 And the Land trod by Prophet, 
 
 And chaunted by Bard, 
 Is left to the foot 
 
 Of the wolf and the pard. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF JERUSALEM. 97 
 
 But who ride the whirlwind ? 
 
 The drinkers of blood. 
 From the summit of Lebanon 
 
 Rushes the tiood. 
 ^Tis the Turcoman, hovering 
 
 For slaughter and spoil. 
 0, helpless gazelle ! 
 
 Thou art now in the toil ! 
 
 King of Kings ! on our neck 
 
 Sits the slave of a slave, 
 As wdld as his mountains, 
 
 As cold as our grave ; 
 All his sceptre the scourge. 
 
 All our freedom his will. 
 Yet Thy children must tremble. 
 
 Must agonise still. 
 
 Fly swift, ye dark years ! 
 
 Still the savage is there ; 
 
 The tiger of nations 
 
 Is couched in his lair. 
 
 fl 
 
98 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 The field is a thiclcet, 
 
 Tlie City a heap. 
 And Israel on earth 
 
 Can but wander and weep. 
 
 King of Kings ! shall she die ? 
 
 Hark ! a trumpet afar ; 
 It pierces my soul, 
 
 Yet no trumpet of war. 
 I hear the deep trampling 
 
 Of millions of feet, 
 And the shoutings of millions, 
 
 Yet solemn and sweet. 
 
 Now the voices of thunders 
 
 Are calling on high^ 
 The pomp has begun. 
 
 The Redemption is nigh. 
 I see the crowned Fathers, 
 
 The Prophets of fire, 
 And the Martyrs, whose souls 
 
 Shot to Heaven from the pyre. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF JERUSALEM. 99 
 
 Who comes in His glory, 
 
 Pavilioned in cloud ? 
 Judah, cast off thy shame ! 
 
 Israel, spring from thy shroud ! 
 Thy King has avenged thee. 
 
 He comes to His own ; 
 With earth for His empire. 
 
 And Zion His throne. 
 
 H 2 
 
RETRIBUTION. 
 
 " And when he had opened the Fifth Seal, I saw under the altar the souls 
 of them that were slain for the word of God ; and for the testimony which 
 they held. 
 
 " And they cried with a loud voice ; saying, How long, Lord, holy and 
 true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell upon the 
 earth ? 
 
 " And white robes were given unto every one of them ; and it was said 
 unto them, that they should rest yet for a Uttle season, until their fellow- 
 servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be 
 fulfilled." — Apocalypse vi, 9. 
 
 There are murmurs ou the deep, 
 There are mui-murs ou the Heaveu. 
 
 Though the world still sleeps its sleep. 
 Though no prophet-sign is given, 
 
 Earth that final storm shall feel; 
 
 'Tis a storm of man and steel. 
 
RETRIBUTION. 101 
 
 Tribes arc in their forests now, 
 Idly hunting wolf and deer, 
 
 Tribes are crouching in their snow, 
 O'er their wild and wintry cheer ; 
 
 Destined yet to swell the roar, 
 
 When the tempest-rain is gore. 
 
 Guilt of old has stained the world, 
 Carnage pour its purple tide, 
 
 But the bolt, in mercy hurled, 
 Quivered o'er the spot, and died. 
 
 ^^Tien the judgment-fires shall fall, 
 
 Woe to each, and woe to all. 
 
 Man has shed man's blood for toys. 
 Love and hatred, fame and gold ; 
 
 Now, a mightier \\Tath destroys. 
 Earth in cui'eless crime grows old. 
 
 Past destruction shall be tame 
 
 To the rushing of that flame. 
 
102 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 When the clouds of vengeance break. 
 Folly shall be on the wise. 
 
 Frenzy shall be on the weak. 
 Kingdom against kingdom rise. 
 
 Earth, one maddened mighty horde, 
 
 All, the kingdom of the sword. 
 
 Then, the Martyrs^ solemn cry, 
 That a thousand years has rung. 
 
 Where their robes of crimson lie. 
 Round the " Golden Altar " flung. 
 
 (Saviour, listen to thine own !) 
 
 Shall be answered from the Throne. 
 
 Yet shall Rome her conscience lull. 
 Till the wine is at the brim. 
 
 Hark the Storm ! her ear is dull ; 
 Gleams the flash, her eye is dim. 
 
 Heaven above, and Earth below, 
 
 Arm them for the final Viot ! 
 
RETRIBUTION. 103 
 
 Still shall Faith be sternly tried, 
 
 Still the dungeon shall be filled, 
 Dying as their brethren died, 
 
 Still God's servants '' shall be killed/' 
 From the chain, the scaffold's floor, 
 Sons of Glory ! ye shall soar. 
 
 Then, unhewn by mortal hands. 
 
 From the Mount shall roll the Stone ; 
 
 Then Earth's sceptres shall be wands. 
 War shall sw-eep from zone to zone. 
 
 Earth shall see, once more, a Flood ; 
 
 But, its billows shall be — blood ! 
 
HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 A PARAPHRASE FROM GOETHE. 
 
 " Behold, the Heaven, and the Heaven of Heavens, cannot contain Thee. 
 -1 Kings viii, 27. 
 
 Roll ou, thou Sun ! in glory roll, 
 
 Thou Giant, rushing through the Heaven, 
 Creation's wonder, Nature's soul. 
 
 That hast no Morn, and hast no Even ; 
 The Planets die without thy blaze ; 
 
 The Cherubim, with star-dropt wing, 
 Float on the ocean of thy rays. 
 
 Thou brightest emblem of their King ! 
 
HYMN OF THE UNIVEKSE. 105 
 
 Roll, lovely Earth, in night and noon, 
 
 With Ocean's band of beauty bound, 
 While one sweet orb, the pearly Moon, 
 
 Pursues thee through the blue profound ; 
 And angels, with delighted eyes, 
 
 Behold thy plains, and mounts, and streams. 
 In day's magnificence of dyes. 
 
 Swift whirling, like transcendent dreams. 
 
 Roll, Planets, on your dazzling road. 
 
 For ever sweeping round the Sun. 
 What eye beheld, when first ye glowed ? 
 
 What eye shall see your courses done ? 
 Roll, in your solemn majesty. 
 
 Ye deathless splendours of the skies. 
 Ye Altars, from which angels see 
 
 The incense of Creation rise. 
 
 Roll, Comets, on your flaming cars. 
 
 Ye heralds of sublimer skies ; 
 Roll on, ye million-million Stars, 
 
 Ye hosts, ye heavens of galaxies ! 
 
106 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Ye, who the wilds of Nature roam, 
 Unknown to all but angels' wings. 
 
 Tell us, in what more glorious dome, 
 
 Rules all your worlds, the King of Kings ? 
 
THE PROPHECY AGAINST TYRE. 
 
 The prophecies of Ezekiel divide themselves into 
 three portions, — those relating to the crimes and 
 calamities of the Jews left in Palestine during the 
 Captivity ; the punishments allotted to the nations, 
 the Moabites, Ammonites, and Philistines, who had 
 persecuted the Jews ; and the encouragement of the 
 Jews detained in Babylon. 
 
 But Tyre, as being at once the most profligate, 
 and probably the most persecuting of the neighbour- 
 ing countries, is spoken of with the strongest abhor- 
 rence, and threatened with the heaviest ruin. 
 
 " Son of Man, because that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, 
 she is broken up, that was the gates of the people ; she is turned unto mc ; 
 I shall be replenished, now she is laid waste. 
 
108 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, Bebokl I am against thee, Tyrus, 
 and will cause many nations to come up against thee. 
 
 " And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers ; 1 
 will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. 
 
 " It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea ; for I 
 have spoken it, saith the Lord God, and it shall become a spoil to the 
 nations ; and her daughters shall be slain by the sword, and they shall 
 know that I am the Lord." — Ezekiel xxvi, 2. 
 
 ^TwAS morning. On thy ramparts, Tyre, 
 Spread to the Sun the standard's fold, 
 
 And marched to sounds of trump and lyre, 
 Thy mitred Priesthood, purple- stoled ; 
 
 And chieftains mailed, with haughty vane, 
 
 Poured to Astarte's blood-stained fane. 
 
 And crowding on thy glorious bay. 
 Far as the dazzled eye could gaze, 
 
 Where Tyre's imperial gallies lay. 
 Rose choi'al hymns, and altars' blaze. 
 
 And surges, bright as molten ore, 
 
 Wafted the incense to the shore. 
 
THE PROPHECY AGAINST TYRE. 109 
 
 Yet in the Pageant clanked the chain, 
 And mingled there the captive's groan ; 
 
 And piled upon the ponderous wain, 
 The golden spoils of Judah shone ; 
 
 And sharper than the sword or spear, 
 
 Struck to the heart the Tyrian's sneer. 
 
 Yet all, at once, are hushed as death, 
 Recoils at once the living wave ; 
 
 No footstep falls, is breathed no breath, 
 As, like a comer from the grave, 
 
 Ezekiel's lip and eye of fire. 
 
 Peals Heaven's hi":h wrath on o-uiltv Tvre. 
 
 " Hail ! Queen of Glory, slave of shame, 
 Hail ! head of gold, which curses crown, 
 
 Panther, thy ravening shall be tame. 
 
 The bow is drawn that strikes thee dowi>. 
 
 Eagle, thy wing shall lose its plume ; 
 
 Serpent, thy haunt shall be the tomb. 
 
no SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " Thy sword has smote Jerusalem, 
 And for that smitmg thou shalt die ; 
 
 Thy strength be dust, thy wealth a dream, 
 Thy power, like summer-clouds pass by ; 
 
 Thy name, among forgotten things. 
 
 Now war thee with the King of Kings. 
 
 " The captive's hopeless agony. 
 
 The blood that clamours from the ground, 
 The altar's curse, the dungeon's cry. 
 
 At last, at last one throne have found. 
 Tyrant, thy turban shall be bowed, 
 That throne is on the thunder-cloud. 
 
 " Ride on, in taunt and triumph, ride, 
 
 Thy heait shall be the xnilture's meal. 
 jVow follows thee a giant stride, 
 
 . A giant hand shall grasp thy wheel. 
 Thy sceptre shall be weak as air. 
 Thy throne shall be a bloody lair. 
 
THE PROPHECY AGAINST TYRE. Ill 
 
 " The plague shall wither up thy heart, 
 
 The famine waste thee to the bone ; 
 Through the rent skin the nerv.e shall start, 
 
 Thy veins a flame, thy voice a groan. 
 Pangs utterless thy soul shall fill. 
 Yet comes the vengeance, sterner still. 
 
 " It Comes — I know the distant roar, 
 
 The rushing of the routed field. 
 Hark to the storm, whose rain is gore : 
 
 The flood, whose surge is spear and shield ; 
 I see thee in the worse than grave, 
 I see thee, Asshur^s ti'embling slave. 
 
 " Yet, thou shalt live. The feud within 
 
 Through weary years thy strength shall drain, 
 
 Corruption fill thy cup of sin. 
 
 And Falsehood forge and fix the chain ; « 
 
 And Treason in the dark shall slay, 
 
 And thus thy strength shall melt away. 
 
112 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " Strike, strike, thou Man of Macedon ! 
 
 Rush ou her ramparts, smite her walls. 
 Now, sets in gore her lingering sun ; 
 
 Her palaces thy chargers' stalls. 
 Her wealth, the harvest of thy spear. 
 Now, Tyre, thou'rt of the things that were ! 
 
 " The Earth shall see a thousand Kings, 
 Yet thou shalt still be desolate. 
 
 A Sand, where vultures rest their wings. 
 Where the sea-eagle meets its mate ; 
 
 A Rock, by time and tempest riven, 
 
 Abhorred by man, accursed by Heaven \" 
 
THE ATLANTIC. 
 
 The Deluge forms a principal feature in the earliest 
 history of every nation. The traditions connected with 
 it in the ancient mythologies, however decorated by the 
 imagination of the Greek, or confused by the mysticism 
 of the Indian, have probably a stronger foundation in 
 truth, than it has been customary to suppose. 
 
 The descendants of Noah were the population of the 
 world ; and it is impossible to conceive that the events of 
 the antediluvian ages, in which human life was protracted 
 to such extraordinary lengths, apparently for the purpose 
 of their record, were wholly unknown to the descendants 
 of the great patriarch. 
 
 The succinctness of the Mosaic history is accounted 
 for, on the principle that its direct purpose was, to 
 
114 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 establish the fact of Creation by the God of Israel, and 
 to give the history of the Promises to Adam and 
 Abraham, unconfused by mingling with the compara- 
 tively unimportant details of their ancestral existence. 
 
 The location of a vast island, or rather continent, in 
 the space which now forms the bed of the Atlantic 
 Ocean, is the subject of several ancient traditions, and 
 is inwoven with many more. In them all the reference 
 is to a country immediately bordering on the west of 
 Africa, and therefore affording no ground for the 
 theory that America was the Atlantis. Atlas, from whom 
 the submerged continent e^ddently derives its name, was 
 also described as King of Mauritania. He was a Titan, 
 with thousands of flocks, pastured in fields of unfailing 
 fertility, and with gardens of unrivalled beauty, filled 
 with the most exquisite fruits, and those fruits guarded 
 by an enormous dragon ; the whole probably founded on 
 the History of Paradise, the Forbidden Tree, and the 
 Serpent. The fate of the Titan is equally removed from 
 the common order of things. He was warned of his 
 destiny by Themis (Divine Justice), and changed 
 into a mountain. 
 
 The Atlantides, a people who survived in his African 
 Kingdom, held that all the Gods (the Antedilmaans) 
 had their birth in their country. The seven daughters 
 
THE ATLANTIC. 115 
 
 of Atlas, Atlantides, married Gods and heroes, and 
 their descendants built cities and founded kingdoms. 
 Atlas was also the first who taught the knowledge of 
 the stars to mankind, and he thus carried the Heavens 
 on his shoulders. Finally his daughters were trans- 
 formed into islands on the borders of Africa, the Cape 
 de Verde, or the Canaries. They had among their 
 dominions, the Elysian Fields. Our authorities are 
 Strabo, Pliny, and the Timaeus of Plato. 
 
 Among those imaginations, there is, probably, a 
 considerable ground of truth. It is certain, that the 
 greater part of the present habitable world was once the 
 bed of an ocean. That at the period of the Deluge, the 
 ocean changed its bed, and that consequently the Ante- 
 diluvian world is now, for the greater part, under the 
 waters, is almost the only secure fact of Geology. The 
 general absence of human remains in the fossil beds, 
 which contain such numberless relics of the lower 
 creation, is equivalent to the proof that the place of 
 the original population has not yet been discovered by 
 human eyes. That discovery must be withheld, until 
 the " sea gives up her dead." 
 
 I 2 
 
116 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Roll on, thou Ocean, dark and deep, 
 Thou wilderness of waves ! 
 
 Where all the tribes of earth might sleep 
 In boundless graves. 
 
 The sunbeams on thy bosom wake. 
 Yet never pierce thy gloom ; 
 
 The tempests sweep, yet never shake. 
 Thy mighty tomb. 
 
 Great mystery, unfathomed bier. 
 Thy secret, who hath told ? 
 
 Guilt, power, and passion's wild career, 
 Man, and his gold. 
 
 There lie Earth's myriads in the pall, 
 Secure from sword and storm. 
 
 And he, the f caster on them all, 
 The canker-worm. 
 
THE ATLANTIC. 117 
 
 Bright from Heaven's hand, thy mountain's brow 
 
 Once basked in morning's beam ; 
 And loved thy midnight Moon to glow, 
 
 On grove and stream. 
 
 And stately from thy tree-crowned height, 
 
 Looked down the holy fane ; 
 And filled thy valley of delight 
 
 The golden grain. 
 
 And floated on thy twilight sky. 
 The dewy fields' perfume, 
 
 The vineyard's breath of luxury ; 
 Now all — the tomb ! 
 
 An ocean shrouds thy glory now ; 
 
 Where are thy great and brave. 
 Lords of the sceptre and the bow ? 
 
 Answer, wild wave ! 
 
118 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Crime deepened on the recreant land. 
 Long guilty, long forgiven. 
 
 There Power upreared the bloody hand, 
 Pride scoffed at Heaven ! 
 
 Then came the word of overthrow ! 
 
 The judgment-thunders pealed, 
 The fiery earthquake burst below, 
 
 Her doom was sealed ! 
 
 Now in her halls of ivory. 
 
 Lie ocean-weed and serpents' slime; 
 Buried from man and angeFs eye. 
 
 The Land of Crime 1 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 The overthrow of the French Monarchy in 1789, 
 commenced the most fearful series of events since the 
 fall of the Roman Empire. Dynasties had fallen, and 
 factions had flourished before, but there was no instance 
 of the i-uin of a Monarchy, by the combustion of its own 
 elements, or of a ten years' Government of successive 
 factions. While all the old features of national disturb- 
 ance were renewed, the French Revolution exhibited 
 one characteristic wholly new to nations — Infidelity 
 nationally proclaimed, and made a principle of public 
 action. It was the only instance in History, in which 
 Rehgion was wholly excluded from the motives of the 
 State ; in which Atheism was sanctioned by the decrees 
 of a Legislature ; in which the mortality of the soul 
 
120 SCENES FKOM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 was a political dogma, and in which a Constitution was 
 prefaced by the denial of a God ! 
 
 The progress of these events is sufficiently remark- 
 able, to be worth nothing in their order. 
 
 1789. — On the 5th of May, the States-General 
 met at Versailles — the beginning of the Revolution. 
 On the 27th of June the National Assembly was 
 formed. 
 
 On the 13th of August, within six weeks from the 
 first sitting of the National Assembly, the Chui'ch of 
 France was overthrown : by the decree for the abolition 
 of tithes. The whole priesthood were instantly pauper- 
 ized, and many were subsequently massacred. The 
 Church was the first public body subverted by the 
 Revolution. 
 
 In 1792, the King was deposed. 
 In 1793, the King and the Queen w^ere murdered by 
 the guillotine. 
 
 In June, the Democracy was proclaimed, its three 
 principles being — the sovereignty of the people, the 
 indifference of the Government to aU religious distinc- 
 tions, and the levee en masse, or the right of summon- 
 ing the whole population to arms. 
 
 On the 8th of August the leve'e en masse was prac- 
 tically proclaimed by the decree, " All Frenchmen are 
 
THE FRENCH KEVOLUTION. 121 
 
 commanded to hold themselves in permanent readiness 
 for the armies." 
 
 September 28. — The Christian Era was publicly 
 abolished. The observance of a Sabbath was pro- 
 hibited. Olympic games were appointed to be held 
 every fourth year in honour of Liberty. 
 
 October 16. — The Sections of Paris demanded at 
 the bar of the Convention the total extinction of religious 
 worship. 
 
 November 1. — Gobet, Vicar-General of Paris, at- 
 tended by a body of the priesthood, abjured Christianity ! 
 uttering the fearful words : " All rehgion is an im- 
 posture." 
 
 November 10. —The mortality of the soul was 
 proclaimed by an Act of the Convention. An image of 
 Sleep was ordered to be erected in all burial places, with 
 the inscription : " Death is an eternal sleep." 
 
 During this period the waste of human life was 
 incalculable. The levee en masse had raised fourteen 
 armies, and there was war on all the frontiers. There 
 was still more wasteful war in the interior : the war in 
 the Vendee was a massacre. But the terrible distinction 
 of the time was the personal misery, the popular agony, 
 which accompanied its whole progress. All the 
 noblest and best of France were sent to the dungeon, to 
 be massacred by mobs, or by the scarcely less desperate 
 
133 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 cruelty of the tribunals. The prisons were emptied by 
 massacre. The governing factions were in perpetual 
 change, and every change sent the vanquished to 
 the guillotine. Nearly all the original movers of the 
 Revolution died on the scaffold. In Paris the guillotine 
 was in perpetual action. The processions of the con- 
 demned became almost a daily pageant. There was a 
 corresponding scaffold in every principal city in France. 
 It was calculated that eighteen thousand persons died 
 by the guillotine alone. This period was justly charac- 
 terised as, " The Reign of Terror !" 
 
 But even the rapid execution of the revolutionary 
 instrument became too slow for the Democracy ! 
 Separate execution gave way to the slaughter in 
 masses ; the fusillade, noyade, and mitraillade, names 
 invented to supply the language of execution with 
 terms required by the new demands of slaughter, 
 belong to this period alone. France exhibited to the 
 world an aspect of squalidness, bloodshed, and suffering, 
 unexampled in the history of the world. 
 
 In 1804, this aspect was totally changed. The 
 Democracy was extinguished, and France was a Despotism 
 — and of all despotisms the most rigid, the reign of the 
 sword. Napoleon was declared Emperor. In a country 
 which had abolished all. titles of honour, was suddenly 
 established a new nobility of the sword. Principalities 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 123 
 
 and Dukedoms were distributed among the Generals and 
 Ministers of France. The army even exhibited a 
 spectacle of pomp which had never been seen in Europe. 
 Kings were among the commanders of its divisions, 
 and its march was followed by the vassal Kings of the 
 continent. 
 
 Still, the primal spirit of the Revolution survived. The 
 Empire w^as as Jacobin as the Democracy. Napoleon 
 stiU offered revolutionary freedom to the provinces of 
 every power w^hich he invaded. His only conception of 
 Government was tyranny, and in the fullest supremacv 
 of the sword, he still loved the dungeon. The illus- 
 trious Pitt pronounced him, in all the triumph of his 
 ambition : " The child and champion of Jacobinism." 
 
 In 1813, a League of the four great Powers was 
 formed for the first time, and England, Russia, Austria, 
 and Prussia, at once took the field. 
 
 In 1814, the continental army, of a million of men, 
 with another million in reserve, crossed the French 
 frontier, marched upon the Capital, and after a series 
 of battles, extinguished the Empire of Napoleon. 
 
 In 1815, Napoleon re-entered France, seized the 
 Throne, lost his army at Waterloo, and surrendered 
 himself as a prisoner to England ! 
 
 In 1821, May 5, he died at St. Helena. 
 
124 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 " And the fifth Angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from Heaven unto 
 the Earth. 
 
 " And he opened the bottomless pit, and there arose a smoke out of the pit. 
 
 " And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth. 
 
 " And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the 
 Earth, neither any tree, but only those men which have not the seal of God 
 in their foreheads. 
 
 " And in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it. 
 
 " And the shapes of the locusts were like horses prepared for battle. And 
 on their heads were, as it were, crowns like gold, and their faces were as the 
 faces of men. 
 
 " And they had a king over them. 
 
 " And the four Angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour and 
 a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men." — Apoca- 
 lypse IX, 1. 
 
 I HEARD a trumpet sound, 
 
 Earth shook, the Heavens were dim, 
 I saw a falling Star, 
 
 Like the moon^s eclipsing limb. 
 
 And a blood-stained haze 
 
 Rushed round its blaze ; 
 
 But that Star still shone 
 
 On a kinglcss throne. 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 125 
 
 I saw from the Abyss, 
 
 Shoot up a thousand fires ; 
 I saw a locust-cloud 
 
 Rise on their sulphurous spires. 
 
 In his noontide, the Sun 
 
 Sank, sickening and dun ; 
 
 And the smoke wrapped the Globe, 
 
 Like a funeral robe. 
 
 Then, that hell-born locust-host 
 
 Rolled onward like a flood ; 
 Yet the harvest-field was safe, 
 
 And safe the leafy wood. 
 
 Of that plague-cloud wan, 
 
 The prey alone was Man ; 
 
 And the bond and the free 
 
 To the locusts bent the knee. 
 
 There was torment in the land. 
 
 The famine and the chain. 
 And thousands writhed and groaned. 
 
 And gnawed their tongues with pain. 
 
126 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 And the lovely and brave 
 Were plunged in the grave ; 
 And in that agony 
 Thousands prayed to die ! 
 
 Upon the field of battle, 
 In exile far and lone, 
 
 Men perished for the temple, 
 Men perished for the throne, 
 Still the locust-cloud 
 Was a living shroud ; 
 And the locust sting 
 Slew the serf and the king. 
 
 I saw an idol temple ! 
 But there no idol shone. 
 
 No golden censer burned 
 To gods of wood or stone. 
 To a mortal bowed 
 The shouting crowd. 
 And the nation's cry 
 Was blasphemy 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 127 
 
 I saw a mighty grave ! 
 
 But no holy sign was there, 
 But the corpse of king and slave 
 
 Was flung in, without a prayer, 
 
 And a pillar stood. 
 
 Inscribed in blood, 
 
 In that tainted gloom, 
 
 " The Eternal Tomb." 
 
 Then, the trumpet rang again, 
 
 And the locusts swept the Earth ; 
 But 'twas now as if her womb 
 
 Had teemed with human birth. 
 
 They wore the helms of Kings, 
 
 And the rushing of their wings 
 
 Was like rushing chariot-wheels. 
 
 Or the tramp of chargers' heels. 
 
 Above them blazed the banner — 
 
 That fiendish, fallen Star ; 
 Above them winged the Eagle, 
 
 Scenting his prey afar. 
 
128 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 And the clang of their mail 
 Rang loud on the gale ; 
 And Crown and Tiar 
 Led their legions to war. 
 
 Their chieftain was a King — 
 A King of fearful name ! 
 
 'Tis shouted in the central caves 
 Of misery and flame. 
 Abaddon, the Lord 
 Of the Sceptre and Sword, 
 Resistless by man. 
 But his Star shall be wan ! 
 
 Then the storm of battle raged, 
 
 And the Eai'th was drenched with blood ; 
 And the warrior and his steed 
 
 Were the wolf and vulture's food. 
 
 And the world stood at gaze 
 
 At that battle's red blaze, 
 Like men on the shore 
 Of an ocean of gore. 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 129 
 
 Once more the trumpet swelled, 
 
 But 'twas glorious now and grand ; 
 And a shout of triumph pealed 
 
 From the Ocean and the Land. 
 
 For on fiery wings 
 
 Came the Spirits of kings ; 
 
 With banners unfurled, 
 
 To rescue the World ! 
 
MAN. 
 
 " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? and the Son of Man that 
 Thou visitest him. Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him 
 with glory and worship. 
 
 " Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands, and 
 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." — Psalm viii, 4, 6. 
 
 " Four things the living world control, 
 The eve, the heart, the mind, the soul." 
 
 The Eye, the glorious eye ! 
 
 What lie beneath its splendid sweep ? 
 All bright, all deep, all high. 
 
 Broad Ocean, Alpine steep, 
 Night's grandeui*, morning's rosy dye. 
 
 The hues that on the evening waters sleep ; 
 All beauty, might, and majesty. 
 
 Bright orb, all lie within thy splendid sweep. 
 
MAN. 
 
 131 
 
 llie Heart, the glowing heart ! 
 
 What lie within its mystic cells ? 
 Visions that shame the painter's ait, 
 
 Deep thoughts, that only silence tells. 
 Stings, like the Indian's poisoned dart, 
 
 That kill unseen. Dehcious spells ! 
 Love fixed, till life itself depart; 
 
 Fond thing, all lie within thy mystic cells. 
 
 The Mind, the mighty mind! 
 
 What lie beneath its sceptre's sway ? 
 The million wills of humankind. 
 
 Empire's young strength, and old decay ; 
 The laws that grasp the viewless wind, 
 
 The science of the Solar way ; 
 The chains by eloquence entwined ; 
 
 Sovereign '.—all lie beneath thy sceptre's sway. 
 
 The Soul, the soaring soul ! 
 
 What lie beneath thy fiery wing ? 
 
 Beneath thee burns the starry Pole, 
 
 Above thee sits, alone, thy King ! 
 
 K 2 
 
132 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 ThoUj when the final thunders roll, 
 In glory from the grave shalt spring, 
 
 Life, Death, and Heaven — the mighty whole- 
 Immortal ! lie beneath thy fiery wing. 
 
ELISHA IN DOTHAN. 
 
 " Thea the King of Syria warred against Israel. 
 
 " And the Man of God sent unto the King of Israel, sa>-ing, Beware that 
 thou pass not such a place, for thither the Syrians are come down. 
 
 " Therefore the heart of the King of Sma was troubled for this thing. 
 
 " And one of his servants said, Ehsha the Prophet telleth the King of 
 Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber. 
 
 " And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothau. 
 
 " Therefore he sent thither horses and chariots, and a great host. 
 
 " And when the servant of the Man of God was risen eariy, behold, a host 
 compassed the city. 
 
 " And Elisha prayed, and the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and 
 he saw, and beheld the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round 
 about Elisha. 
 
 " And Elisha prayed, ' Smite this people with blindness.' And He smote 
 them with blindness. 
 
 " And the King of Israel said unto Elisha, ' My father, shall I smite 
 them ?' 
 
 " And he answered, ' Thou shalt not smite them.' 
 
 " And he sent them away, and they went to their master." 
 
 2 Kings vi, 8. 
 
134 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 ^Tis night ! and the tempest 
 
 Is rushing through Heaven ; 
 The oaks on the hills 
 
 By the lightnings are riven : 
 The rain in the valleys 
 
 Falls heavy and chill ; 
 And the cataract bursts 
 
 In the bed of the rill. 
 Wild home for the Syrian, 
 
 On Hermon's white brow ! 
 While the gust bears along 
 The scoff and the song, 
 From IsraePs proud tents, 
 
 In the forest below. 
 
 ^Tis midnight — deep midnight, 
 The hour for sm-prise ! 
 
 From the storm-shattered ridges. 
 The warriors arise : 
 
 Now the Syrian is marching 
 
 Through storm and through snow. 
 
ELISHA I\ DOTHAX. 135 
 
 Ou the revel of Israel 
 
 To strike the death-blow. 
 No light guides his march, 
 
 Bat the tempest's red glare; 
 No ear hears his tramp 
 lu Israel's doomed camp. 
 The hunters have driven, 
 
 The deer to its lair ! 
 
 Now, wild as the wolf, 
 
 When the sheepfold is nigh ; 
 They shout for the charge, 
 
 " Let the IsraeUte die !" 
 Still, no trumpet has answered, 
 
 No lance has been flung, 
 No torch has been lighted, 
 
 No arrow has sprung. 
 They pom* on the rampart — 
 
 The tents stand alone ! 
 Through the gust and the haze, 
 The watch-iires still blaze, 
 
136 SCENES FROM SCttlPTURE. 
 
 But the warriors of Israel 
 Like shadows are gone ! 
 
 Then spake the King^s sorcerer : 
 
 " King, wouldst thou hear, 
 " How these Israelite slaves, 
 
 " Have escaped from thy spear : 
 " Know, their prophet Elisha, 
 
 " Has spells to unbind 
 " The words on thy lip, 
 
 " Nay, the thoughts in thy mind. 
 " Though the secret were deep 
 
 " As the grave, 'twould be known. 
 " The serpent has stings, 
 " And the vvdture has wings, 
 " But he's serpent and vulture, 
 
 " To thee and thy throne \" 
 
 ""Tis mormng — they speed 
 Over mountani and plain, 
 
 'Tis noon — yet no chieftain. 
 Has slackened the rein. 
 
ELISHA IN DOTHAN. 137 
 
 'Tis eve — and the valleys 
 
 Are dropping with wine, 
 But no chieftain has tasted 
 
 The fruit of the vine. 
 To Dothan the horseman. 
 
 And mailed charioteer, 
 Are speeding like fire ; 
 Their banquet is ire, 
 For the scorner of Syria, 
 
 Elisha is there ! 
 
 On thy battlements, Dothan ! 
 
 That evening, was woe ; 
 There fell the fierce hail 
 
 Of the lance and the bow. 
 Yet, still from the towers, 
 
 The banners were hung, 
 And still from the ramparts 
 
 The stormers were flung. 
 But, the fire-shafts are showered 
 
 On roof and on wall ; 
 
138 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 And the cry of despair, 
 Rises wild on the air, 
 For Dothan, that Eve, 
 Must be rescued, or fall ! 
 
 Hark ! the ramparts are scaled. 
 
 All rush to the gate ; 
 'Tis the moment of terror, 
 
 The moment of fate ! 
 And men tore their garments. 
 
 And women their hair : 
 But EnsHA came forth 
 
 From the chamber of prayer. 
 Like thunder his voice 
 
 O'er the multitude rolled : 
 " Jehovah, arise ! 
 Pour Thy light on our eyes ; 
 And show Israel the shepherds 
 
 Who watch o'er Thy fold." 
 
 The mountain horizon 
 Was burning with light ; 
 
ELISHA IN DOTHAN. 131) 
 
 On its brow stood the Syrian, 
 
 In glory and might ; 
 Proud waved to the sunset 
 The banner's rich fold : 
 Proud blazed the gemmed turbans. 
 
 And corslets of gold. 
 And loud rose the taunt 
 
 Of the InlidePs tongue : 
 " Ho ! Israelite slaves, 
 This night sees your graves. 
 x\nd first, from your walls 
 Shall Elisha be flung \" 
 
 At the word stooped a cloud, 
 
 From the crown of the sky ! 
 In its splendours the Sun, 
 
 Seemed to vanish and die. 
 From its depths poured a host 
 
 Upon mountain and plain, 
 There was seen the starred helm, 
 
 And the sky-tinctured vane, 
 
140 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 xVnd the armour of fire^ 
 
 And the seraph's bright wing- 
 But no eyeball dared gaze 
 On the pomp of the blaze, 
 As their banner unfolded 
 The name of their King ! 
 
 But where are the foe ! 
 
 Like a forest o'erblown, 
 In their ranks, as they stood, 
 
 Their squadrons are strown ! 
 No banner is lifted. 
 
 No chariot is wheeled ; 
 On Earth lies the turban. 
 
 On Earth lies the shield. 
 There is terror before them. 
 
 And terror behind ; 
 Now, proud homicide, 
 Thou art smote in thy pride. 
 The Syrian is captive, 
 
 His host are struck blind ! 
 
ELISHA IX DOTHAX. 141 
 
 There were vvrithings of agony, 
 
 Yells of despair, 
 And eyeballs turned up, 
 
 As if seeking the glare ; 
 And sorcerers howling 
 
 To Baal in vain, 
 The madness of tongue, 
 
 And the madness of brain ! 
 And groups of pale chieftains, 
 
 Awaiting in gloom. 
 Till the Israelite sword 
 In their bosoms was gored ; 
 While the shoutings of Dothan 
 
 Seemed shoutings of doom ! 
 
 But they knew not Elisha, 
 
 They knew not his Lord, 
 Unsubdued by the sword, 
 
 They were spared by the sword. 
 Sad, silent, and slow, 
 
 Like a funeral train. 
 They were led by the hand. 
 
 Over mountain and plain. 
 
142 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Alone by the might 
 
 Of Jehovah overthrown ; 
 No drop of their blood 
 Stained forest or floods 
 Till the host o'er the borders 
 Of Israel were gone ! 
 
 Those, those were the triumphs 
 
 Of Israel of old ! 
 • And those were the shepherds 
 
 Who guarded the fold. 
 But the Leopard was loosed 
 
 From his thickets again, 
 And the flock of the Chosen 
 
 Were scattered and slain. 
 But, visions are rising, 
 
 Mysterious and grand ; 
 The trumpet shall sound. 
 And the dead be unbound, 
 For the night is far spent, 
 
 And the day is at hand ! 
 
HYMN OF THE MARTYRS. 
 
 " I water my couch with my tears. 
 
 " Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old, because of mine 
 enemies. 
 
 " Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the 
 voice of my weeping. 
 
 " The Lord hath heard my supphcation. The Lord will receive my 
 prayer." — Psalm vi. 6. 
 
 Lord of the Heavens ! Earth's King of Kings ! 
 
 "Whose nature and whose name is Love, 
 Thou, throned upon the Angels' wings, 
 Saviour, in whom we live and move ! 
 Ho^ long shall stream the tear, 
 That streams to Thee alone ? 
 How long our bosoms bear 
 Their Cross before Thy throne ? 
 Hear us, and help — Thou Holy One ! 
 
144 
 
 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 For not with flesh aud blood we war, 
 But with the mighty Unforgiven ! 
 Their leader, once the Morning Star — 
 Their legions, once the sons of Heaven. 
 Even Thou hast felt their power — 
 Thou of the thorn- crowned brow ; 
 The dark, soul-struggling hour, 
 Tlie mockery, the blow, 
 The vast variety of mortal woe. 
 
 Yes ! thou Eternal Majesty ! 
 
 With bowed and broken hearts we come. 
 And humbled glance, and bended knee ; 
 Pale pilgrims of a world of gloom ! 
 Behold our altar-fires. 
 Behold us on them lay 
 Earth's dreams and low desires ; 
 And long to rend away 
 Our robe of sorrow, sin, and clay. 
 
 When shall we wear the Angel-crown, 
 When shall we wave the Angel-wing ? 
 
HYMN OF THE MARTYRS. 145 
 
 When cast our starry chaplets down 
 In joy before our Saviour- King ? 
 Descend^ all glorious One ! 
 Be Satan downward hurled. 
 Be Earth no more his throne ; 
 Be Death's dark banner furled — 
 Come, Monarch of Thy ransomed world. 
 
THE WORLD. 
 
 " The Earth mourneth and fadeth away, the World languisheth and fadeth 
 awaj'. The haughty people of the Earth do languish. 
 
 "The Earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof ; because they 
 have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting 
 covenant." — Isaiah xxiv, 4. 
 
 " But, though our outward luan perish, yet the inward man is renewed 
 day by day. 
 
 " For, our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far 
 more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
 
 " While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which 
 are not seen ; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things 
 which are not seen are eternal." — 2 Corinthians iv, 16. 
 
 What is the world ? A morn, a noon, an eve : 
 A scene of lips that smile, and hearts that heave 
 A pageant thing of parent, child, and bride, 
 All, atoms floating down Time's restless tide. 
 
THE WORLD. 
 
 147 
 
 Life, but the loss of all we called our own, 
 Like doves, scarce nestled to the heart — and flown ! 
 A Couch, where tears must mingle with our sleep. 
 Till the last slumber — when we cease to weep. 
 A phantom-peopled Stage, where all decays. 
 Even while the soul is quivering with the gaze. 
 Ashes with glory, splendour mixed with gloom, 
 Rapture with woe, the bridal with the tomb ; 
 The regal mantle with the funeral pall. 
 Change, the great Despot, ruling over all ! 
 
 And is this all the wisdom man can give ? 
 Know, Sceptic, here we but heyin to live ; 
 Our trials, but the discipline of soul, 
 The virtue of Immortals — Self-Controul ! 
 Our sorrows, but the seed of glory sown : 
 The mercy Heaven's ; the errors all our own ! 
 Lord of the heart ! howe'er my race be run, 
 So let it finish, that " Thy will be done." 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 
 
 " And he spake a parable unto them, to this end; that men ought always 
 to pray, and never to faint. 
 
 " And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night to 
 Him, though He bear long with them ? 
 
 " I tell you, He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of 
 Man Cometh, shall He find faith upon the Earth."- — Luke xvtii. 
 
 Great God ! how loug shall man defy 
 Thy vengeance^ but to taunt — and die ! 
 How long his frantic lip blaspheme 
 Thy glorious Kingdom^ as a dream ! 
 How long the Atheist^s sullen soul 
 Disdain the Prophet^s burning scroll ! 
 How long before the idol-shrine 
 Bow the lost hearts, that should be Thine ? 
 Thou sinner^s dread — thou sinnei'^s stay, 
 When comes, Great God ! Thy Judgment Day ? 
 
THE JUDGMENT DAY. 149 
 
 Great God ! how long Thy scattered sheep, 
 
 Thy Saints, shall only watch and weep ! 
 
 Pour Thy high truths on thankless ears, 
 
 And eat the bread of toil and tears ! 
 
 Walk through a scoffing world — alone ; 
 
 The Serpent on Thy rightful throne ! 
 
 Ye comets, light our more than gloom ; 
 
 Ye thunders, burst our more than tomb. 
 Thou sinucr^s dread — thou sinner's stay, 
 When comes, Great God ! Thy Judgment Day ? 
 
 Great God ! already fills the wine 
 The cup of wrath, the final Sign i 
 The foul and fierce Idolater, 
 Tyrant at once and tempter here ! 
 Earth stamped with crimes, undared befoi-e, 
 Man, guilt-corrupted to the core, 
 The world in deepening evil still, 
 At last one great, consummate 111 ! 
 Thou sinner's dread — thou sinner's stay. 
 When comes. Great God ! Thy Judgment Day 
 
150 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Great God ! I see Thy sickle sweep ; 
 The harvest^s ripe^ 'tis time to reap ! 
 At midnight shall the startled eye 
 Be fixed upon the flashing sky ; 
 All hearts with sudden fear be wrung, 
 All knees in sudden prayer be flung : 
 Now tauntj thou haughty Infidel ! 
 When the last thunders round thee swell. 
 Thou sinner's dread — thou sinner's stay, 
 Is this, Great God ! Thy Judgment Day ? 
 
 Great God ! then all shall be revealed ! 
 Guilt from all eyes, but Thine, concealed ; 
 The tyrant-wrong, the traitor-art, 
 The whole dark history of the heart. 
 jNIad avarice, and madder pride. 
 The hand in midnight murder dyed ; 
 Secrets in stern oblivion flung. 
 Now trembling on the wretch's tongue. 
 Thou sinner's dread — thou sinner's stay. 
 Is this, Great God ! Thy Judgment Day ? 
 
THE JUDCiMEXT DAY. 151 
 
 Great God, I hear the trum])et sound ! 
 
 It rings to Earth^s remotest bound, 
 
 To Ocean's deepest depths it rings ; 
 
 Death^s sentence to all living things ! 
 
 Life's summouer to all the dead ! 
 
 Give up, thou old Unlimited ; 
 
 Give up, dark Grave, thy countless spoil ; 
 
 Rise all that ever trod Earth's soil ! 
 Thou sinner's dread — thou sinner's stay, 
 This is. Great God ! Thy Judgment Day ! 
 
WRATH ON JERUSALEM. 
 
 " Woe to Ariel,* to Ariel, add ye year to year, kill sacrifices. 
 
 " Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and son"o\v. 
 
 " And I will camp against thee round about, and lay siege against thee. 
 
 " And thou shalt be brought down, and thy speech shall be low out of the 
 dust, as of one that hath a familiar spirit. 
 
 " Thou shalt be visited by the Lord of Hosts with thunder, and with 
 earthquake, and with storm and tempest. 
 
 " Stay yourselves and wonder, cry ye out, they stagger, but not with strong 
 drink. 
 
 " For the Lord hath poured upon you deep sleep, and hath closed your 
 eyes, the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath He covered." — Isaiah 
 XXIX, 1. 
 
 Woe to Ariel, woe to Ariel ! 
 
 Swift shall come her agony, 
 Though the songs of Zion swell, 
 
 Though on Heaven is fixed the eye, 
 
 * Ariel, the Lion ol God. the prophetic name of Jerusalem. 
 
AVKATH OX JERUSALEM. 153 
 
 Though the daily Sacrilice 
 Flames to the insulted skies. 
 
 Round her walls shall spread a camp ! 
 
 Yet no warrior's tread be there, 
 Like the lion^s midnight ramp, 
 
 Echoing on the sleepless ear. 
 
 What are mortal spear and shield, 
 
 When Heaven's armies sweep the field ? 
 
 INIine shall be the chariot-wheel. 
 
 Rolling on the harvest-storm ; 
 Mine the crushing thunder-peal, 
 
 INline the locust and the worm ; 
 
 Famine to the land shall cling, 
 
 Plague its livid heart shall wi'iug ! 
 
 Then, thy rebel multitude 
 
 Misei-y's last dregs shall drain ; 
 Then, thy soul shall be subdued 
 
 To the cham, the more than chain. 
 
154 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Who the fetter shall unbind, 
 When its links are in the mind ? 
 
 Like a viewless, soundless stream. 
 Year on year shall linger by ; 
 
 All thy waking, but a dream ; 
 All thy life, a lethargy ; 
 Till thy haughty voice is low, 
 Like a Spirit's voice of woe ! 
 
 Memory shall rack thy brain, 
 With the glories past away ; 
 
 Day, diversity of pain ; 
 
 Night, alone a darker day ! 
 Anguish shall her furrows plough 
 In thy pale and unhelmed brow. 
 
 What to Me is prayer or praise. 
 When the heart no more is given ? 
 
 What to Me the Altar's blaze, 
 Hut the mockery of Heaven ? 
 
WRATH ON JERUSALEM. 155 
 
 Vain the clouds of incense rise ; 
 All is Heathen, in mine eyes. 
 
 Madness ! shall the potter's clay 
 
 Proudly on the potter turn ! 
 Shall the creature of a day, 
 
 Heaven^s eternal wisdom spurn ! 
 
 Shall the hypocrite's disguise. 
 
 Baffle Heaven's eternal eyes ! 
 
 Then shall fail the Prophet's vision, 
 
 Then is filled thy cup of woe ; 
 Thou, the Heathen's fierce derision ! 
 
 Ruin's last and heaviest blow. 
 
 Drunken, but not drunk with wine, 
 
 All shall see the blow — divine. 
 
 Wake, ere waking be too late ! 
 
 Till the wisdom of the wise 
 Shall but force thee to thy fate, 
 
 Lies be truth, and truth be lies ; 
 
 Plunged ni inij)otencc of soul, 
 
 Faction, Frenzy, Death — the AMiolc ! 
 
THE WOE UPON ISRAEL. 
 
 " My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. 
 
 " And he planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst 
 of it ; and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth 
 wild grapes. 
 
 " And now go to. I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will 
 take away the hedge thereof. 
 
 " And I will lay it waste : there shall come up briars and thorns. 
 
 " The harp and the viol and wine ai-e in their feasts, but they regard not 
 the work of the Lord. 
 
 " Therefore Hell hath opened her mouth, and their glory shall descend 
 into it. 
 
 " Woe unto those who call evil good, and put bitter for sweet, and sweet 
 for bitter. 
 
 " Therefore is the anger of the Lord turned against His people. 
 
 " And He will lift up an ensign to the nations from afar. 
 
 " None shall be weary nor stumble among them. 
 
THE WOE UPON ISRAEL. 157 
 
 <• Their horses' hoofs shall be Uke flint, and their wheels like a whirl- 
 wind. 
 
 " Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar and lay hold of the 
 prey, and none shall deliver it."— Isaiah v, 1. 
 
 Israel, thou wert once a Vine, 
 Never clusters dropped such wine ; 
 Round its beauty wreathed a bower. 
 O'er it watched a guardian tower ; 
 But the dark Idolater, 
 Son of Sin and Spoil, was there, 
 And my vineyard was defiled. 
 All its glorious fruitage — wild ! 
 
 But, a cloud shall Wight thy bower, 
 But, a blast shall shake thy tower ; 
 Branching stem, and sheltering hedge, 
 All, shall feel the axe's edge. 
 Then shall be the Curse fulfilled, 
 Thou shalt lie a Land untilled ; 
 Anguish-ploughed, and famine-worn. 
 Buried in the weed and thoni ; 
 
158 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 All thy beaiitj^, swamp and sand- 
 Of all Lands, the loneliest Land ! 
 
 Hark ! I hear the dancers bound ; 
 Hark ! the maddening cups go round. 
 On the midnight revel swim 
 Frantic song and Idol-hymn. 
 Day and night, still sin on sin. 
 Adding to the weight within. 
 Scarcely rescued from the chain. 
 Ripening for its links again ! 
 
 Hell is longing for thy tread, 
 Li\ing, yet already dead ! 
 Now it opes its jaws of flame 
 For the remnant of thy name. 
 Idly wise, and weakly great, 
 Hourly tampering with thy fate, 
 Palace, cottage, temple, wall, 
 Mean or mighty, thou shalt fall ! 
 
 I 
 
THE AVOE UPON ISRAEL. 159 
 
 Israel, where are now thy wise ? 
 
 Woe to those who live by lies, 
 
 Calling (all their souls deceit) 
 
 Evil good, and bitter sweet. 
 
 Selling justice, pampering crime, 
 
 But revenge shall bide its time ! 
 
 Like the chaff before the gale. 
 
 Like the harvest in the hail, 
 
 Like the stubble in the blaze. 
 
 Like the cluster that decays, 
 
 Ere ^tis ripened on the tree — 
 
 Israel, thou and thine shall be ! 
 
 Think'st thou that My wrath shall sleep, 
 
 When I see the Orphan weep ! 
 
 When I see thy revels fed 
 
 With the lonely widow's bread ! 
 
 Now, the shaft is on the string, 
 
 That shall strike thy haughty wing. 
 
 Listen, where in more than gloom. 
 Rush the fillers of the tomb ; 
 
160 SCENES FROM SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Come from regions fierce and far, 
 
 Come with more than mortal war. 
 Swift as eagles' wings they sweep, 
 None shall stumble, none shall sleep 
 Strange their accents on thine ear ; 
 All before them, flight and fear, 
 Flint their horses' hoofs, their wheel 
 Making all thy mountains reel ; 
 Roaring, like the lion's roar. 
 Till their thirst is gorged with gore ! 
 
POEMS, 
 
 M 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 
 
 The Ottoman Empire is the most singular in- 
 stance in History, of a vast dominion reared solely 
 by the sword, governed by the expenditure of blood, 
 despising civilization, disordered in every function of 
 government, yet advancing from conquest for three 
 centuries, without a check :* and though thenceforth 
 exposed to aU the great military Powers of Europe, 
 retaining its vast possessions unimpaired for three 
 centuries more. 
 
 The first advance of the Turks to Europe was 
 the invasion of Nicomedia by Othman, the son of 
 a Turcoman chief in the service of Aladdin, the Sultan 
 
 * From A.D. 1299 to 1566. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 POEMS. 
 
 of Iconium.* The Asiatic territory of the Greek 
 Emperors was lost in a struggle of two centuries, 
 closed by the capture of Constantinople.! The 
 corpse of the last Constantine was found buried 
 under a heap of slain, and Constantinople became 
 the capital of a new faith, a new people, and a 
 new^ empire. 
 
 The successors of Mahomet II. lavished the blood, 
 but exercised the valour, of their armies in expeditions 
 to Armenia, the Caucasus, and Persia. But the true 
 prize was in the West. AU solid sovereignty belongs 
 to the hardy frames and steady temperament of the 
 European nations. Soliman I. threw himself upon 
 Hungary. Combining the operations of a fleet and 
 an army, in itself an evidence of the superiority of 
 his genius to his time, he at once invaded Hungary, 
 and assaulted Rhodes, then the stronghold of the 
 Knights of St. John, and looked upon as the bul- 
 wark of Christendom. By the reluctant aid of the 
 Venetians, Rhodes, after a memorable siege, was 
 taken ; and Soliman invaded Austria, at the head of 
 two hundred thousand men, a force which no potentate 
 of Europe, in the mdeness and distractions of the age, 
 could hope to resist. 
 
 * 1299= t 29th of May, H53. 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET ]I. 165 
 
 On its march it trampled down the army of 
 Hungary, which had the madness to stand in its 
 way ; and leaving the bodies of twenty thousand men, 
 with their King, on the field, and converting the 
 kingdom into a Turkish province, it invested Vienna. 
 But in the midst of his conquests, with all Christendom 
 trembling at the approach of the Horsetails, Soliman 
 died. 
 
 \Yith him the Ottoman Empire had reached its 
 fated height. Thenceforth, it was to descend. Soli- 
 man, a hero and a legislator, reigned almost half a 
 century. The reigns of his successors became pro- 
 verbial for their bre\dty. The Janizaries wTre the 
 true mastei'S of the throne. From the reigns of 
 Mustapha I., whom they strangled for his effeminacy, 
 and Achmet, whom they placed on the throne 
 and then strangled for his usurpation, those troops 
 were the recognized masters, and executioners, of the 
 Sultans. But the first decisive recoil of the Empire 
 was the defeat of the Vizier Kaza Mustapha, under 
 the walls of Vienna, by John Sobieski at the head 
 of the Polish army.* It invaded the West no more. 
 In the beginning of the next century, it was assailed 
 
 * 12th of September, 1683. 
 
166 POEMS. 
 
 on the weakest of its frontiers by the most formidable 
 of its enemies. Peter the Great invaded Moldavia.* 
 But though repelled, and even forced to make a 
 convention for his retreat, his successors never forgot 
 the hope of conquest, and it still forms a principle 
 of their throne. 
 
 The present century commenced in an accumu- 
 lation of those horrors which had become characteristic 
 of Turkish history — Selim, the rightful Sultan, 
 dethroned and strangled ; Mustapha, the usurper, 
 dethroned and strangled ; Bairactar, the famous Vizier, 
 in his attempt to avenge the murder of Selim, blown 
 up by his own hand, and a multitude of his adherents 
 slaughtered by the Janizaries ; and finally, the Janizaries 
 massacred by Mahmoud, the Sultan ; all less re- 
 sembling the acts of an established government than 
 the last convulsions of a suicidal Empire. 
 
 Yet the Ottoman Government has stood, the suc- 
 cession of the Sultans is preserved, and the power 
 of the nation is placed under the protection of the 
 chief Cabinets of Europe. Mahmoud was a man of 
 singular ability, though unfortunate; and the present 
 Sultan has conducted his Government with a man- 
 liness and moderation entitling him to the respect 
 
 * 1711. 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 167 
 
 of the European powers. The Seraglio was the 
 true cause of Turkish decline. The secrecy of its 
 bloody transactions, its habitual separation of the 
 Sovereign fi'om his people, the influence which it gave 
 to women and slaves, and the desperate selfishness 
 and grave impurity which must have been nurtured 
 wathin its walls, extinguished all the rude original 
 virtues of barbarism. 
 
 This system is now partially changed. The 
 Monarch no longer trembles at the sight of his subjects, 
 and his subjects no more tremble at the sight of their 
 Monarch. The hideous executions of the Seraglio have 
 ceased : ministers are changed without the bowstring, 
 and the Sultan feels at the mercy of the multitude no 
 more. 
 
 But the providential purpose will yet be fulfilled. 
 Mahometism was sent to punish the corrupted Religion 
 and incurable profligacy of the Greek Empire ; it has 
 lain on the land ever since ; the lava, whether burning in 
 its flow, or solid in its stagnation, equally forbidding the 
 fertility of the soil. Of the future what man shall tell ? 
 but a higher than human foresight has pronounced that 
 Christianity shall yet cover the Globe ! 
 
168 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 SuLTAUN ! Sultaim !* 
 
 Thou art Lord of the World ! 
 The crown of its crowns 
 
 At thy footstool is hurled. 
 Now trembles the West, 
 
 The East kneels before thee ; 
 Joy, joy to the breast 
 
 Of the mother that bore thee. 
 
 Earth's tale shall be told, 
 
 Ere thy banner's green fold 
 
 Is dust, or thy name 
 
 Is no longer a flame ! 
 
 Hark, hark ! to the shouts, 
 
 Where thy Turcomans lie. 
 Round the feast on the ramparts. 
 
 That blaze to the sky. 
 Where the battlements reek 
 
 With the gore of the Storm ; 
 And the spoils of the Greek 
 
 With his heart's-blood are warm ; 
 * The Turkish pronunciation of the title. 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 169 
 
 And his new-wedded bride, 
 By the conqueror's side, 
 As his corpse, wan and cold, 
 Sits in fetters of gold ! 
 
 High hour in the Palace ! 
 
 There sits at the board, 
 With Imaum and wan'ior. 
 
 The King of the Sword ! 
 And shouting they quaff 
 
 The Infidel wine, 
 And loudly they laugh 
 
 At the hypocrite^ s whine. 
 
 " Let women and boys 
 
 Shrink from Earth and its joys. 
 
 Was the grape only given 
 
 For Houris and Heaven ?" 
 
 Now the banquet is ended ; 
 
 The cannon's last roar 
 Has welcomed the night 
 
 On the Bosphorus' shore. 
 
170 POEMS. 
 
 Now the sweet dew of slumber 
 Has fallen on each eye ; 
 
 And, like gems without number, 
 The stars fill the sky ; 
 And no echo is heard, 
 But the night-chaunting bird ; 
 And the tissues are drawn 
 Round thy chamber, Sultaun ! 
 
 There is pomp in that chamber, 
 
 That dazzles the eye ; 
 The ivory and amber, 
 
 The loom's Indian dye ; 
 The diamond-starred shield. 
 
 That its keen lustre flings, 
 WTiere the golden lamp streams 
 
 On the King of Earth's Kings. 
 
 Yet, the pale, watching slave. 
 
 Who hears thy lip rave ; 
 
 And hears that heart-groan. 
 
 Would shrink from thy throne ! 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 171 
 
 Sultaun ! Sultaun ! 
 
 Why thus writhe in thy sleep, 
 Why grasp at thy dagger, 
 
 Why shudder and weep ? 
 There are drops on thy brow, 
 
 Thick-falUng as rain ; 
 The wringings of woe 
 
 From the heart and the brain. 
 
 And thy cheek^s now blood-red. 
 
 Now pale as the dead ! 
 
 Art thou corpse ? art thou man ! 
 
 Sultaun ! Sultaun ! 
 
 There are visions unsleeping, 
 
 Before that closed eye ! 
 Hosts rushing o'er Earth, 
 
 Hosts plunged from the sky ; 
 And Fields thick with carnage, 
 
 And Cities in flame. 
 And Rulers of darkness. 
 
 That Man dares not name. 
 
172 POEMS. 
 
 The Sultaun feels a grasp, 
 Like a serpent's strong clasp ; 
 And from Earth he upsprmgs, 
 In a whirlwind of wings ! 
 
 Now, he shoots through the clouds, 
 Till the sounds of Earth die ; 
 
 Through fire, and through floods, 
 Till the Stars seem to fly. 
 
 Then, he shoots down again ; 
 He is standing alone, 
 
 On a measureless plain. 
 
 And around him are strown. 
 Wrecks of time-mouldered bones, 
 Crushed under their thrones ; 
 And the viper's dark swarms. 
 Twining jewels and arms ! 
 
 Then, like rushing of cataracts. 
 
 Uttered a Voice : — 
 " Wilt thou see what shall come ? 
 
 Man of Fate, take thy choice. 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 173 
 
 Who the future ivill know, 
 
 Shall see clouds on his Dawn." — 
 " Come weal or come woe," 
 
 High spoke the Sultaun ! 
 
 Then the Plain seemed to reel 
 
 With the clashing of steel. 
 
 And upburst a roar, 
 
 Like the Sea on the shore. 
 
 " I see on the Desert 
 
 The gatherings of gloom :" — 
 " Those clouds are thy Moslems, 
 
 The armies of doom !" 
 Then, the Danube was blood, 
 
 And Buda was flame, 
 And Hungary's lion 
 
 Lay fettered and tame. 
 
 Then fell proud Belgrade, 
 
 Nor the torrent was stayed, 
 
 Till, Vienna, it rolled 
 
 Round thy turrets of gold ! 
 
174 POEMS. 
 
 Ho ! Priuces of Christendom 
 Shrink at the sound ; 
 
 Ho ! cling to thine altar, 
 Old King, triple crowned ! 
 
 Ay, look from thy Vatican ; 
 All is despair ; 
 
 Thy Saints have forgot thee, 
 No Charlemagne is there !- 
 But a haze, deep and dun. 
 Swept over the Sun ; 
 And the Pageant was fled, 
 All was still as the dead ! 
 
 Then the Plain was a sea 
 
 Of magnificent blue ; 
 And in pomp o^er the waters 
 
 The Crescent-flag flew. 
 There, the haughty Venetian 
 
 Came sullen and pale ; 
 And on wall and on rampart 
 
 The gun poured its hail. 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 175 
 
 Where thy warriors, St. John, 
 Stood, like lions alone ! 
 Till the trench was a grave 
 For the last of the brave ! 
 
 Then, all passed away, 
 
 Fleet and rampart were gone; 
 He heard the last shout. 
 
 The trumpet's last tone. 
 But o'er the wild heath 
 
 Fell the rich Eastern night : 
 The rose gave her breath. 
 
 The Moon gave her light. 
 
 'Twas the Bosphorus' stream 
 
 That reflected her gleam ; 
 
 And the turrets that shone 
 
 In that light were his owu ! 
 
 "Sultaun! Sultaun ! 
 
 Now look on thy shame ;" 
 In a silken Kiosk 
 
 Lay a vice-decayed frame. 
 
176 POEMS. 
 
 And before his faint gaze, 
 
 To voice and to string, 
 Danced his soft Odalisques, 
 
 Like birds on the wing. ■ 
 
 There was mirth mixed with madness, 
 
 Strange revel, strange sadness ; 
 
 The bowstring and bowl. 
 
 The sense and the soul ! 
 
 Where are now his old waifiors ? 
 All tombed in their mail : 
 
 Where his Banner of Glory ? 
 Let none tell the tale. 
 
 But the gilded caique 
 
 Floated smooth as a dove; 
 
 And the song of the minstrel 
 Was Beauty and Love ! 
 The Sultaun, with a groan. 
 Saw the son of his throne 
 Slave to Woman and Wine : 
 Well he knew the dark Sign. 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET II. 177 
 
 But vengeance was nigh. 
 
 On the air burst a yell ; 
 And the cup from the grasp 
 
 Of the reveller fell. 
 Who rush through the chambers 
 
 With hourra and drum ? 
 The Janizar thousands, 
 
 The blood-drinkers come ! 
 
 Then, a thrust of the lance, 
 
 And a wild, dying glance, 
 
 And a heart-gush of gore. 
 
 And airs hushed— and all's o'er. 
 
 Then again came thick darkness, 
 
 Till dawned a new day ; 
 But no glory of thine 
 
 Was awaked by the ray. 
 Thy kingdoms, like gems 
 
 From thy turban, were torn ; 
 The cusps from the horns 
 
 Of the Crescent were shorn. 
 
178 POEMS, 
 
 The Muscovite roar 
 Echoed round thy pale shore ; 
 And the brand seemed to glow 
 O'er thy City of woe ! 
 
 Ay, mightiest of conquerors ! 
 
 Well may'st thou weep, 
 And struggle to rend 
 
 The dark fetters of sleep. 
 Before thee stands Azrael, 
 
 The King of the Tomb ; 
 At his call rise the Spirits 
 
 Of War on the gloom. 
 
 From South and from North 
 
 Come the torturers forth ; 
 
 Till the flags of the world 
 
 Round Stamboul are unfurled ! 
 
 Why pauses the sword, 
 That thirsts in the hand ? 
 
 Does the thunder-burst wait, 
 But the final command ! 
 
THE DREAM OF MAHOMET 11. 179 
 
 It shall rush like a deluge, 
 
 The terrible birth 
 Of the vengeance of Heaven, 
 
 And madness of earth. 
 
 When Sovereign and slave 
 
 Shall be foam on its wave ; 
 
 Thy kingdom is gone — 
 
 Sultaun ! Sultaun 
 
 N 2 
 
THE EMPEROR AND THE RABBI. 
 
 There is a tradition of the Talmud, that a Rabbi, 
 attempting to convert Trajan to the faith of Israel, was 
 met by the objection : " How can I believe in Him 
 whom I cannot see? Show me your God, and I will 
 worship Him." 
 
 The reply of the Rabbi was : " I cannot show you 
 my God, because He is not to be perceived by the senses 
 of man ; but I shall show you one of His ambassadors." 
 
 The Rabbi led Trajan into the open air, and showed 
 him — the SuN. 
 
 " Old Rabbi, what talcs dost thou pour in mme ear^ 
 What vision> of glory, what phautoms of fear." 
 
THE EMPEROR AND THE RABBI. 181 
 
 Of 11 God, all the Gods of the Romans above, 
 A mightier than Mars, a moi-e ancient than Jove. 
 
 " Let me see but his splendours, I then shall believe. 
 'Tis the senses alone that can never deceive. 
 But show me your Idol, if earth be his shrine. 
 And your Israelite God shaU, old dreamer, be mine !" 
 
 It was Trajan that spoke, and the stoical sneer 
 Still played on his features, sublime and severe. 
 For, round the wide world, that stooped to his throne. 
 He knew but one God, and himself was that one ! 
 
 " The God of our forefathers,^' low bowed the Seer, 
 Is unseen by the eye, is unheard by the ear ; 
 He is Spirit, and knows not the body's dark chain ; 
 Immortal His nature, eternal His reign. 
 
 " He is seen in His power, when the storm is abroad ; 
 In His justice, when guilt by His thunders is awed ; 
 In His mercy, when mountain and valley and plain 
 Rejoice in His sunshine, and smile in His rain." 
 
182 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 " Those are dreams/' said the monarchy 'Svild fancies of old ; 
 But, what God can I worship, when none I behold ? 
 Can I kneel to the lightning, or bow to the wind ? 
 Can I worship the shape, that but lives in the mind V 
 
 " I shall show thee the herald He sends from His throne." 
 Through the halls of the palace the Rabbi led on, 
 Till above them was spread but the sky's sapphire dome, 
 And, like surges of splendour, beneath them lay Rome ; 
 
 And towering o'er all, in the glow of the hour. 
 The Capitol shone, Earth's high centre of power : 
 A thousand years glorious, yet still in its prime ; 
 A thousand years more, to be conqueror of Time. 
 
 But the West was now purple, the eve was begun ; 
 Like a monarch at rest, on the hills lay the sun ; 
 Above him the clouds their rich canopy rolled. 
 With pillars of diamond, and curtains of gold. 
 
 The Rabbi's proud gesture was turned to the orb : 
 " King ! let that glory thy worship absorb !" — 
 
THE EMPEROR AND THE RABUI. 183 
 
 ''What, worship that sun, and be blind by the gaze ; 
 No eye but the eaglets could look on that blaze/' — 
 
 " Ho ! Emperor of Earth, if it dazzles thine eye 
 To look on that orb, as it sinks from the sky,'* 
 Cried the Rabbi, " what mortal could dare but to see 
 The Sovereign of him, and the Sovereign of thee \" 
 
REMEMBRANCE. 
 
 If I forget Thee, let my right hand forget her cunning." — Psalm cxxxvii. 
 
 Shall mortals murmur at the grave ? 
 
 I weep, I worship, and obey ! 
 When all a Father's mercy gave, 
 A Father's wisdom takes away. 
 
 Still live the fine, fond ties that bind 
 The heart to heart, the mind to mind. 
 
 The thoughts that fill the eyes with tears. 
 
 The hours of consecrated love, 
 The tried companionship of years. 
 The hope, again to meet above ; 
 Can those be only things of air ? 
 To doubt — were doubly anguish there. 
 
REMEMBRANCE. 185 
 
 If Memory, busy Memory, 
 
 Still gives the accents to our ear ; 
 Still brings the form before our eye, 
 All that we loved to see, and hear — 
 The look, the voice, the stej), so knoivn, 
 We scarcely can believe them — s;one ! 
 
 The fond contrivances to please ; 
 
 The Art, divested of all art, 
 To set the anxious mind at ease ; 
 The heroism of the heart ; 
 
 The sunshine of life's wintry day ; 
 Those cannot, cannot pass away ! 
 
 If Heaven has glorious mysteries, 
 
 Truths, triumphs, only known above. 
 Too dazzling for our mortal eyes. 
 The mighty miracles of Love ! 
 Shall the pure Spirit only soar, 
 (All love on earth) to love no more ?. 
 
186 POEMS. 
 
 If Friendship, beyond Mount or Main, 
 Still treasures all that once was dear, 
 And those it ne^er may see again, 
 Awake the wish, awake the tear. 
 What art thou, dread Eternity, 
 But loftier Mount, and broader Sea ! 
 
THE WANDERINGS OF 10. 
 
 (FROM THE "PROMETHEUS" OF .ESCHYLUS.) 
 
 Fable revels in the history of lo. She was the 
 daughter of Inachus, who was the son of Oceanus and 
 Tethys, the latter being the daughter of Uranus and 
 Terra — Heaven and Earth, (all which lofty genealogy 
 probably meant that Inachus had come from beyond 
 the Mediterranean.) He founded the kingdom of 
 Arg^s, where his daughter lo w^as born, and was 
 priestess of Juno. She was so eminent for beauty, 
 that she aroused the jealousy of the goddess. Jupiter, 
 to protect her, transformed lo into a cow ! but Juno 
 was not to be deceived, and she requested the cow as a 
 present. The request was complied with, but lo was 
 
188 POEMS. 
 
 still the source of dissension in Olympus. Juno 
 appointed Argus, the hundred-eyed, to watch the cow, 
 but Jupiter sent Mercury to kill Argus, ^yhich he 
 effected by piping him to sleep, and then cutting oif bis 
 head. His eyes were transferred (by Ovid) to the 
 peacock's tail. Juno, not to be baffled, next sent one of 
 the Furies to torture her, and she fled through the 
 world till she reached the banks of tlie Nile. 
 
 Here she entreated to be restored to her former 
 shape, and the persecution, which unaccountably pursued 
 her as a cow, ceased on her becoming once more a 
 woman. In Egypt she married Osiris, the King, and 
 after her death was w^orshipped as an Egyptian divinity 
 — the Isis. 
 
 But of this mass of absurdity ^schylus is guiltless. 
 He makes no allusion to the persecutions inflicted by 
 Juno, or to the protection afforded by Jove, to whom, 
 however, he attributes the restoration of lo to the human 
 shape. 
 
 Much labour has been wasted by the learned in such 
 matters, on the story of this wanderer, which seems to 
 rank as one of the oldest traditions of Greece, if not of 
 Ionia, for Homer names Mercmy the Argus-slayer. 
 The transformation of lo has been supposed by some 
 to refer to the " Mooned" Isis, which was represented 
 
THE WANDERINGS OF lO. 189 
 
 in Egypt Nvith the crescent on its forehead, a worship 
 which may have heen transferred to Argos, By others 
 it has been humiliated into the history of a lunatic, (as 
 in the instance of the Proetides,) imagining herself a cow. 
 The more probable source is the history of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, whose tremendous infliction must have been 
 known all over the East, the original land of all those 
 traditions. iEschylus has taken the advantage natural 
 to a great poet, and has formed on the wanderings of 
 the goddess (or the lunatic) a " Tom- of Europe," as 
 then known, finished by a glance into the Egyptian 
 Mysteries. 
 
 10 SOJ.ICITS THE GUIDAISCE OF PROMETHEUS. 
 
 Prometheus speaks. 
 
 " Go, youug beauty, loved of Jove, 
 Doomed the weary world to rove ; 
 Mother of a race of Kings^ 
 Yet to feel life's sharpest stings. 
 
190 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 Go uot where the Scythian warn 
 
 Toils along the endless plain, 
 
 And the clouded morning light 
 
 Seems but sister of the night. 
 
 Go not where the furnace- gleam. 
 
 Shining on the midnight stream, 
 
 Down its mountain channels rolled, 
 
 Like a cataract of gold. 
 
 Shows where in their forests freeze. 
 
 Sons of steel, the Chalybes. 
 
 Go not where Araxis pours. 
 
 Roaring as the lion roars, 
 
 Flashing round my mountain-chain. 
 
 Like the lion^s tossing mane ; 
 
 Nor with fainting footsteps climb, 
 
 Caucasus, thy heights sublime, 
 
 Nature's dreariest solitude. 
 
 Soil of sorrow, soil of blood, 
 
 When the restless thunder fills 
 
 All the star-aspiring hills. 
 
 Blinding eye, and rending ear, 
 
 Man^s first birthplace, Man's last bier ! 
 
THE WANDERINGS OF 10. 191 
 
 " lo, tempt the storm no more, 
 But along the gentle shore, 
 Where Thermodon^s waters sleep, 
 Where the roses ever weep, 
 Where the golden helm and lance. 
 In the southern sunbeam glance. 
 And the Amazonian targe. 
 Glitters in the sportive charge ; 
 Life one endless, joyous day, 
 Wanderer, take thy trembling way. 
 
 " But, again thy woes must wake ! 
 By the vast Cimmerian Lake, 
 Where no Zephyrs fan the wave, 
 Stagnant, silent as the Grave, 
 Vapour-shrouded, dark, and deep, 
 Emblem of eternal sleep, 
 Must thy wayward footsteps glide 
 Its funereal breast beside. 
 Till the pale Mseotic shore. 
 Sees thy day of trial o'er, 
 
19:2 POEMS. 
 
 Giving to its Strait thy name, 
 Its title to immortal fame. 
 
 " Yet, thy task must still be done ! 
 Thou must go^ and go alone, 
 To the Caverns, deep and drear, 
 Where the sister-shapes of fear, 
 Phorcys' daughters, hoar with age, 
 In their adamantine cage. 
 Triple-formed, sit side by side. 
 
 By the hand of Nature tied. 
 With one eye, one mouth, one heart, 
 Plying still their wondi'ous art, 
 All their mystery and might. 
 Veiled in one eternal night. 
 Round their shrine no censers gleam, 
 Sparkles there no starry beam. 
 Blaze no purple lights of morn, 
 Shines no evening lunar horn, 
 Well for mortals, that no eye, 
 Can their dark dommion spy. 
 
THE WANDERINGS OF TO. 193 
 
 " AVho, of moi'tal born could bear, 
 All the mystic terrors there ! 
 Who could see the Gorgons grim, 
 With the scale-enveloped limb ; 
 With the poison-darting fang, 
 Yet not feel the dying pang ! 
 Who could see the Gryphon brood, 
 Reeking from their feast of blood, 
 Riding on the sulphurous air, 
 With their living viper-hair ; 
 Or the countless spectral hosts. 
 Hovering on the dismal coasts 
 Of the flaming Phlegethon, 
 With eternal shriek and moan ! 
 But must long to hide the head. 
 In the darkness of the dead. 
 
 " Go, but dread the Arimasp, 
 Deadlier than the flying asp, 
 On their steeds of blasting light, 
 Flashing through the Lybian night ; 
 
194 POEMS. 
 
 With their one, tire-darting eye, 
 Like a meteor rushing by, 
 And their tongues of forky fire, 
 Uttering words of Demon ire. 
 Things of anguish, things of fear, 
 Worse than death, to see, or hear ! 
 
 '' Listen, Princess, on thine eyes, 
 Wonders shall on wonders rise ; 
 To the Ethiop mountains borne. 
 Where no mortal sorrows mourn ; 
 Where the living waters run 
 From the fountains of the Sun ; 
 Where, with flower-enwreatheu hands, 
 Nigris, on thy golden sands, 
 To the forest's harmony 
 Dance the Daughters of the Sky ; 
 And the Seasons fold their wing. 
 Nature, one eternal Spring! 
 
 " Still, thou wear\', woe-worn one, 
 Fate's high will must all be done ; 
 
THE WANDERINGS OF lO. 195 
 
 Next, thy foot must tread the Sand, 
 Guarding the time-honoured land, 
 Where the temple- crested Nile 
 Glows beneath the Morning's smile, 
 Glows beneath the hues of Even, 
 Mirror of Man's brightest Heaven. 
 There, shall Amnion's oracle 
 All thy wounded spirit heal ! 
 Then the Fates no more shall frown, 
 Then thy brow shall wear a Crown, 
 Oe'r thee joy shall wave her wings. 
 Daughter, Mother, Bride of Kings;* 
 Till the living world shall gaze. 
 On thy Altar's glorious blaze \" 
 
 * lo was the mother of a long line of Mythological heroes and heroines : 
 Epaphus, Danaus, Acrisius, Hypermnestra, Proetus, Danae, Perseus, Alc- 
 niena, Hercules, &c. 
 
 O 'Z 
 
ALGIERS. 
 
 The origin of the French invasion of Algiers was 
 the most trivial that perhaps ever prefaced a war — 
 the flap of a fan in a Consul's face by an angry barba- 
 rian. Yet this was punished by an expedition of 
 thirty thousand men, who expelled the Dey, and took 
 possession of the country. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss the political bearings 
 of that extraordinary transaction on Europe ; or the 
 right, the reason, or the principles of International Law, 
 involved in the conduct of the French Government. 
 
 But its consequences were fatal to the monarchy of 
 that country. It gave the first example, of the expul- 
 sion of an established Government by the simple violence 
 of a mob in the streets of the capital. The great Revo- 
 
ALGIERS. 197 
 
 liition of 1789 was a political earthquake, which first 
 burying all the chief Institutions of the kingdom, only 
 took the throne in its way, as the last object to be 
 plunged into the gulf. But the minor Revolution of 
 1830 stiiick directly at the throne, and only at the 
 throne, leaving all the institutions of the State unas- 
 sailed. This would seem as if it were intended to mark 
 an especial offence of the Sovereign. At all events, the 
 result was the expulsion of the dynasty. Within one 
 twelvemonth from the invasion of Algiers, the monarch 
 was seen flying from his Capital, his dynasty following 
 him into exile, his ministry forced to fly, or thrown into 
 prison; Bourmont, the commander of the expedition, 
 treated as if he had been the vanquished, instead of the 
 victor, and exiled equally with the Cabinet and King ; 
 and his thirty thousand men left in Africa to be extin- 
 guished by the climate, and the persevering hostility 
 of the natives. 
 
 Algiers had long been a blot on civilization, and the 
 restraint of its piracies (though it must come with a bad 
 grace from nations engaged in the Slave-trade), was a 
 natural demand of humanity. 
 
 The expedition of Lord Exmouth was for an especial 
 purpose, the hberation of British subjects, and the 
 honour of the flag, insulted by the massacre of Bona. 
 
198 POEMS. 
 
 It ended with the retahation. The French armament 
 ))eginning with retaliation, ended with possession. 
 
 That Government, which had subsisted in perfect 
 security for fifteen years from the Restoration in 1815, 
 was ruined by a riot — a simple gaminade. There pever 
 was an event more unexpected, which more excited the 
 astonishment of Europe, accustomed as it had been to 
 the shaking of thrones, or which more inclined rational 
 minds to connect it with higher agencies than belong 
 to man. Even the Dey, a barbarian, is said to have 
 exclaimed: "The King of France is gone— God has 
 avenged me !" 
 
 The succession of Louis Philippe seemed to guard 
 peculiarly against the recurrence of this catastrophe. His 
 singular sagacity, his unrivalled knowledge of France, 
 his experience of human nature, acquired in the long and 
 perilous adversity, which has been pronounced the 
 best school for princes, and that politic flexibility of 
 character, which, if it does not add to om' national respect 
 for the man, was supposed to be the especial talent for 
 Continental popularity, made him, perhaps, of all living 
 individuals, the man fittest to govern his ingenious, 
 versatile, and volatile Nation. 
 
 But, Louis Philippe had entered at once into the 
 Algcrine views of his predecessor. He even made 
 
ALGIERS. 199 
 
 the conquest a national question ; raised the army 
 from thirty thousand to one hundred thousand men, 
 and superseded the languid piinciples of the late 
 reign by a war of the most vigorous activity and 
 the most rigorous execution. 
 
 The Moorish war drew but little European ob- 
 servation, partly from the wHdness of the seat of 
 warfare, but still more from the studied silence of 
 its operations. The French bulletins told their own 
 story ; the unfortunate native had no tongue. But 
 it was a war that spread over a region as large 
 as France ; a war in- which European intelligence was 
 not on the watch to check its horrors ; a war against 
 bold barbarians, in which the soldier must often have 
 learned to be a barbarian ; not the war of regular 
 armies, which compel a certain obsen-ance of the laws 
 of regular hostilities, but of the foreign soldier let 
 loose on a peasant population fighting for their wives 
 and children, their cattle and their cottages, all 
 the things without which life is not merely valueless, 
 but incapable of being supported. The Moor was 
 fighting for the essentials of existence. Yet this des- 
 perate war raged for seventeen years ! 
 
 If the Moor is not a Christian, stUl he is a man ; with 
 human blood in his veins, with the common affections 
 
200 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 of husband and father, with an understanding capable 
 of comprehending the miseries of his country, and with 
 undaunted courage to avenge them. And this war 
 raged during the whole government of one of the 
 most intelligent Kings of Europe, and almost in the 
 sight of one of its most powerful Nations. 
 
 Providence must not be appealed to, to solve every 
 passing problem of nations ; but, we see, instantly 
 upon the termination of that war, and at the moment 
 when its captured Chieftain, the heroic Emir, Abd-el- 
 Kader, set his foot on the soil of France, the King 
 dethroned ! And dethroned by the express instrument, 
 in the express time, and in the express ibrm of 
 ruin, which had extinguished his predecessor — by a 
 mob — in three days — and by a conflict in the streets 
 of Paris. 
 
 But, there are circumstances, which render the 
 fall of the late French King stiU more remarkable 
 than that of Charles X. 
 
 Instead of the feebleness of the former reign, of 
 the languid ministry, of the popular surprise, of the 
 parliamentary resistance, and of the doubtful troops 
 — the King was perfectly prepared ; he possessed a 
 Cabinet of the most intelligent men of the country ; 
 he had at his side the favourite commander of the 
 
ALGIERS. 201 
 
 army of Algiers, Marshal Bugeaud, and the most influen- 
 tial public man of France, M, Guizot ; with an army of 
 fifty thousand of the best troops of France, unquestionably 
 loyal, besides a household of Princes in the habit of 
 command, and his Capital surrounded with a circle 
 of fortresses, a circle of defence or offence unequalled 
 in Europe ! Yet he fell, as if the whole were straws, 
 as if his fortresses were houses of sand, as if his army 
 were vapours and figures of the air. 
 
 And his fall was even more ruinous than that of 
 Charles X. ; not merely his Princes were exiled, and his 
 Ministers fugitives, but his throne was destroyed. The 
 Bourbons had left a Monarchy behind ; that Monarchy 
 was now gone ! a Republic stands on its ruins, and a 
 republicanized people stand in the way of its resto- 
 ration. If the laws of Providence may be above our 
 knowledge ; yet we must feel, that if it had intended 
 to declare to mankind its express punishment of an 
 express act, we cannot conceive a more direct evidence 
 than in the perfect similarity of the means, under 
 the extreme difference of the circumstances. — We again 
 have the three days, the mob, the assaults on the palace, 
 the flight of the Ministers, the fall of the Dynasty, 
 and the irreparable ruin. 
 
 The Moor has thus been doubly avenged. And the 
 
202 POEMS. 
 
 wisest thing which France could do, would be in- 
 stantly to withdraw its troops from a forbidden soil, a 
 profitless conquest, and an impracticable people. Worse 
 may still come, and the punishment of obduracy may 
 be even more fatal than the punishment of ambition. 
 
 Algiers ! wild Algiers ! 
 
 There are sounds through the night. 
 Coming thick on the gale, 
 
 Sounds of battle and flight ; 
 And the spurring of squadrons, 
 
 The roll of the wain, 
 The beacon's broad blaze 
 On the far mountain-chuin, 
 xlnd the desert-horn's howl. 
 Like the wolf in his prowl ; 
 And the flash of the spear. 
 Tell the Berber is ilure. 
 
ALGIERS. 203 
 
 Tkc tempest is coming, 
 
 It swells from the South — 
 The Desert^s bold i-itlers, 
 
 Age, manhood, and youth ! 
 Their steeds arc like wind, 
 
 And their frames are like fire, 
 That wounds cannot tame, 
 That toil cannot tire. 
 
 On they burst like a flood. 
 Till the Desert drinks blood, 
 Thick as night-falling dew ; 
 " Allah hu ! Allah hu !'^ 
 
 The Frenchmen are rushing 
 
 To gate and to wall ; 
 13ut, the Moor is awake 
 
 In his gold-tissued hall. 
 He sharpens the dagger. 
 
 And loads the carbine. 
 And oft looks to the East, 
 
 For the morninii- to shine ! 
 
204 POEMS. 
 
 And from rampart and roof 
 Crowds are gazing aloof; 
 And their gestures, though dumb, 
 Tell, "the Emir is come !" 
 
 Ay, follow the Berber 
 
 Through hill and through vale ; 
 He^s the falcon, and swift 
 As its wing on the gale. 
 x\y, scorch through the day. 
 
 And freeze through the night ; 
 He^s the panther, one bound, 
 And he's gone from your sight ; 
 But death's in his tramp, 
 As he roams round your camp ; 
 One grasp, and one roar, 
 And you sleep in your gore. 
 
 'Tis the blue depth of midnight ; 
 
 The moon is above. 
 Shedding silver in showers 
 
 On mosque and on grove ; 
 
ALGIERS. 205 
 
 And the sense is opprest 
 
 With the sweetness of night. 
 'Tis an hour to be blest, 
 All fragrance and light ; 
 But the volley's quick peal, 
 And the clashing of steel, 
 And the cannon's deep boom, 
 There, are gorging the tomb ! 
 
 There is war on the hill, 
 
 In the rocky ravine. 
 On the corn-covered plain, 
 
 In the forest's thick screen. 
 And the roaring of battle 
 
 Still swells through the night ; 
 But at Mornmg the vultures 
 WiU stoop from their flight. 
 Where the feast has been laid. 
 By bayonet and blade ; 
 And unscared they may wreak 
 The talon and beak ! 
 
206 POEMS. 
 
 Shall the plague-spot still blacken 
 
 On each and on all ? 
 Where art thou, old Bourbon ? 
 
 Europe scoffed at thy fall ; 
 AVhere thy fierce " thirty thousand," 
 
 Napoleon^s old " braves ?" 
 Like thee, they are corpses ; 
 Algiers gave them graves ! 
 Where the nctor Bourmont ? 
 He has followed thy throne. 
 Where thy councillors ? Fled, 
 In the dungeon, or dead ! 
 
 Yet, France, though the Berber 
 
 Were crushed by thy heel ; 
 In his heart he has hate, 
 
 In his hand he has steel. 
 His peace will be war ! 
 
 Thou shalt slay, and he slain ! 
 The length of thy sabre, 
 
 The breadth of thy reign ! 
 
ALGIERS. 207 
 
 And the world shall yet riug- 
 With the fall of a King, 
 Flung from country and throne ; 
 Smote, like thee, old Bourbon ! 
 
 But, France, must the Charnel 
 
 Still gape for the dead ? 
 Must the jackal and wolf 
 
 Still on carnage be fed ? 
 Thy treasure, and blood. 
 
 Nay, thy valour, in vain, 
 Thy conquest — but dust, 
 
 To be conquered again. 
 
 Still, ploughing the sand ; 
 
 Still, sabre in hand ! 
 
 Thou, a kingdom of biers, 
 
 Algiers, wild Algiers ! 
 
SORROW. 
 
 Slight comes the pang, slight passes by, 
 
 That melts itself in tears ; 
 The stricken spirit that can sigh, 
 
 No mortal arrow bears. 
 When Fate has snapped the hearths true ties, 
 It scorns the help of tears and sighs. 
 
 Or, if it still its pillow steeps, 
 
 It tries the world to wile ; 
 For night, its sacred sorrow keeps. 
 
 For day, resumes the smile. 
 Till comes the hour — to meet above. 
 And thus it is, with buried Love ! 
 
THE FURIES. 
 
 The Greek mythology deals largely in the future 
 existence of Man, but furnishes its Tartarus much 
 more amply than its Elysium. The latter is merely a 
 Mahometan Paradise, without its Houries — a place of 
 verdurous shades and cloudless sunshine, with a rather 
 feeble imitation of the sports and exercises of Earth — 
 an existence of shadows in a monotony of indulgence. 
 
 But the former shows all the fertility of the Greek 
 mind in terror, and is supplied with all the possible 
 varieties, instruments, and inflictors of torture. On this 
 revolting subject I can only touch to say, that the Fates 
 and the Furies performed a large part in this organization 
 of penalty. The Fates decided, and the Furies punished. 
 What Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos settled in their 
 minds, the more potent and terrible Alecto, Megaera, 
 
210 POEMS. 
 
 and Tisiphone executed. From the power and the 
 habitual vengeance of the Furies, it was thought as 
 hazardous to give them their real title, as it was 
 decorous, or dexterous, or delicate, to address them by 
 the title of Eumenides (gracious, or propitious). 
 
 Their Genealogy has been disputed. Hesiod, the 
 great primitive authority, derives their lineage from the 
 blood-drops of Uranus, at the period when the Giants 
 were born from the same source. The Orphic Hymns, 
 themselves disputed, name them the daughters of Hades 
 and Proserpine. 
 
 There were other avengers, the Keres, beings be- 
 tween the Fates and the Furies. On them depended 
 deaths by violence. On the shield of Achilles the 
 Reres are seen in robes of blood, with Strife and 
 Tumult by their side, engaged in battle. 
 
 But the Erinnyes (the Furies) apparently had the 
 most comprehensive jurisdiction of all, for they arraigned 
 even Gods. Their weapons were Pestilence, Madness, 
 and War. With such means of inflicting national and 
 individual evil, they must have strongly appealed to the 
 superstition of the Greeks. Accordingly, they had 
 many temples. There was one in Achaia, into which if 
 a criminal set foot, he was traditionally struck with loss 
 of reason. 
 
THE FURIES. 211 
 
 Without entering in some degree into the details of 
 mythology, we can scarcely conceive from what a hurden 
 of fear and folly the general mind has been relieved by 
 true ideas on the subject of Religion. 
 
 The Drama of yEschylus, which commemorates the 
 Furies, under their popular title ; if inferior in originality 
 to the Prometheus, which is an aggregate of magnificent 
 abstractions, seems not inferior to it in power, and 
 probably altogether transcended it in popularity. It is 
 the Trial of Orestes for putting his mother Clytemnestra 
 to death; brought in the first instance before the 
 Delphic Oracle, and in the next transferred to the 
 Temple of Miner\-a at Athens. 
 
 It has all the forms of a regular trial. In Delphi, 
 the priestess of Apollo, ' opens the case ;' Apollo is 
 counsel for the culprit ; Orestes appears at the bar ; and 
 the ghost of Clytemnestra is the witness ; the Furies are 
 the accusers, but by a singular dramatic incident (which, 
 however, probably heightened the effect), they are first 
 seen, grouped on the stage in profound sleep. From 
 this they are aroused by the ghost of Clytemnestra, 
 which indignantly reproaches them with their slumber, 
 and they thenceforth require no further stimulant. 
 Apollo, outraged by the violence of their declamations, 
 will no longer desecrate his Temple by their tremendous 
 
 p 2 
 
212 POEMS. 
 
 oratory; and moves the cause to Athens, and the 
 
 presidency of Minerva. 
 
 At Athens, Orestes again stands at the bar, and pleads 
 
 the authority of the Oracle, for the punishment of the 
 
 murderer of her husband, her King, and his father. The 
 
 Furies reply, in speeches of the highest passion and 
 
 power. As the trial proceeds, Minerva evidently leans to 
 
 the acquittal of Orestes, and finally he is absolved by the 
 
 Ballot of the Jury (the judges ; assessors of the Goddess.) 
 
 The Furies, who at first, think themselves insulted 
 
 t . . 
 
 by the decision, are slowly reconciled, by the promise 
 
 that they shall thenceforth share in the sacrifices offered 
 at Births and Marriages ! the whole concluding in 
 brilliant choral tributes of the reconciled accusers, to the 
 glory of Athens. 
 
 If we have irreparably lost the harmony of the Greek 
 language, of which we do not pronounce a v^^ord 
 endurable by the Athenian ear: w^e yet may conceive 
 something of the excitement felt by the most ex- 
 citable people of the earth, seeing their National Gods 
 declaiming in the richest language of man, on subjects 
 of national pride, and transfening the judgment of 
 acts which involved Olympus, to an Athenian tribunal ! 
 Of course, music and scenery added to the charm ; 
 and the triumph of the Drama must have been 
 
THE FURIES. 213 
 
 complete, when Heaven and Hades were heard pouring 
 out theii- panegyrics upon a nation, which if genius 
 could have been the security for extent and duration 
 of dommion, w^ould have been masters of the world, 
 and masters until the end of the world. 
 
 The French critics, of the age of Racine and 
 Corneille, exclaim indignantly against the breach of 
 the Unities, committed in this stately drama : " C'est 
 si bizarre ; TUnite de heu n'est pas gardee dans 
 cette piece." But, a greater authority acquits the 
 Poet. Horace probably had this Drama before his 
 eyes, when he wrote the well-known hnes : 
 
 " Ule per extentum funem mibi posse videtur 
 Ire, Poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit, 
 Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, 
 Ut Magus, et modo me Delphis, modo poait Athenis .'" 
 
 The Furies, in the era of yEschylus, w^ere an in- 
 definite number, and crowded the stage ; but Athenian 
 acting was so ^^vid, and in this instance so alarming, 
 that to spare the public sense of horror, and its effects 
 upon females, the number was reduced by law^ to fifteen. 
 The three Furies of poetry are the limitation of a 
 later age. 
 
214 
 
 POEMS 
 
 EuMEXiDES ! ye throned on flame ! 
 What tongue dares name your darker name 
 Sisters^ and Sovereigns, of the Fates, 
 TVTio sit by HelPs eternal gates ; 
 Where Cerberus, with sleepless howl, 
 Startles the demons, fierce and foul ; 
 And sounds of weeping and of wail 
 For ever on the darkness sail ! 
 I see youi" grandeur, drear and dim. 
 The gold- crowned brow, the giant Hmb, 
 The lui'id, mighty eyes, whose gaze 
 Throws, even round Hell, a broader blaze; 
 Guarded by demigods of Earth, 
 The thunder-shattered Titan's birth. 
 That float around your cloudy throne, 
 Glistening like sei-pents — seen, and gone. 
 
 Ye tamers of all mortal pride, 
 
 Ye punishers of parricide, 
 
 Avengers of man's broken vows. 
 
 The tyrant husband, blood-stained spouse ; 
 
THE FURIES. 21') 
 
 The guilt triumphant, yet untold ; 
 The base, in soul already sold, 
 AVhen traitors play the patriot's part, 
 (The last corruption of the heart), 
 And Faction coils its serpent-rings 
 Round the unguarded hours of Kings. 
 EuMENiDES ! what kingdom stands. 
 When waves the sceptre in your hands ? 
 
 Sepulchral Goddesses ! your power 
 Awakes the conscience-stricken hour ! 
 Nor time, nor distance, day nor night, 
 Can screen the villain from your sight ; 
 Sweeps he along the stormy surge, 
 Above him hangs your scorpion-scourge ; 
 Takes he the desert-eaglets wing, 
 There your swift arrows fix their sting ; 
 Flies he to Ocean's farthest shore, 
 You track him by his steps of gore ; 
 He sees you on the whn-lwind ride. 
 And wishes he at once had died ! 
 
216 POEMS. 
 
 But^ when the darker veugeance still 
 
 For darker guilt, the world must thrill ; 
 
 When crime, too deep to be forgiven. 
 
 Wakes the reluctant wrath of Heaven ; 
 
 You leave the villain to his mles, ■ 
 
 Till the false world around him smiles ; 
 
 All conscience quelled, all fear defied, 
 
 Life, to his glance, a golden tide ; 
 
 All murmurs hushed, all storms o'erblown ; 
 
 The game of fortune all his own ! 
 
 Then, in some high-wi'ought, crowning hour. 
 
 Some day of pride, some feast of power. 
 
 Some hour of double life — and death ! 
 
 Then, breathe your lips their fiery breath ; 
 
 Your Sceptre strikes one viewless blow, 
 
 The palace and its lord are low ! 
 
 A blow that seems the land to stun. 
 
 All gazing on the wretch undone ; 
 
 A thunderbolt of ruin hurled, 
 
 A Moral to the startled World ! 
 
THE FURIES. 217 
 
 Awhile your giant forms are seen 
 The tempest-laden clouds between ; 
 Each drinking, with earth-bended ear, 
 The curses I'ound the hurried bier. 
 Then, vanished from the eyes of men, 
 Ye sit at Hell's dark gates again ! 
 
EPITAPH FOR PETRARCH. 
 
 Here, let the Poet fix his burning eyes ; 
 Here, all that Death can claim of Petrarch, lies ! 
 On this proud Shrine hangs no sepulchral gloom ; 
 He sleeps within the trophy, not the tomb ! 
 He loved, was loved : and Passion's vestal fire 
 Shot loftier splendours round his golden Lyre ; 
 And still the strings the thrilling tones prolong, 
 And the witched World still loves the immortal song. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 I.ONDOX : 
 
 Printed by Schulze and Co.. 13, Poland Street 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 75, third line from tlie end, for Making all the mass read Making 
 all the man a wonnd. 
 
 Page 187, sixth line from the end, for kingdom of Argus, read kingdom 
 of Argos. 
 
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