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THE

THE WILD GAZELLE.

THE wild gazelle on Judah's hills
Exulting yet may bound,

And drink from all the living rills
That gush on holy ground;
Its airy step and glorious eye
May glance in tameless transport by:

A step as fleet, an eye more bright,
Hath Judah witnessed there;
And o'er her scenes of lost delight
Inhabitants more fair.

The cedars wave on Lebanon,

But Judah's statelier maids are gone!

More blest each palm that shades those plains

Than Israel's scattered race;

For, taking root, it there remains

In solitary grace:

It cannot quit its place of birth,

It will not live in other carth.

But we must wander witheringly
In other lands to die;

And where our fathers' ashes be,

Our own may never lie:

Our temple hath not left a stone,
And Mockery sits on Salem's throne.

Lord Byron.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.

HE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

THE

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Lord Byron.

FALLEN IS THY THRONE.

FALLEN is thy throne, O Israel!

Silence is o'er thy plains;

Thy dwellings all lie desolate,
Thy children weep in chains.
Where are the dews that fed thee
On Etham's barren shore?

That fire from heaven which led thee
Now lights thy path no more.

Lord! thou didst love Jerusalem,
Once she was all thy own;
Her love thy fairest heritage,
Her power thy glory's throne:
Till evil came, and blighted
Thy long-loved olive-tree;
And Salem's shrines were lighted
For other gods than thee!

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Then sunk the star of Solyma,
Then passed her glory's day,
Like heath that, in the wilderness,
The wild wind whirls away.
Silent and waste her bowers,
Where once the mighty trod,
And sunk those guilty towers,
While Baal reigned as god!

"Go," said the Lord, "ye conquerors! Steep in her blood your swords,

And raze to earth her battlements,
For they are not the Lord's!
Till Zion's mournful daughter
O'er kindred bones shall tread,
And Hinnom's vale of slaughter

Shall hide but half her dead!"

PALESTINE.

Thomas Moore.

R

EFT of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn,

Mourn, widowed queen, forgotten Sion, mourn !

Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne,
Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone;
While suns unblest their angry lustre fling,
And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring?
Where now thy pomp which kings with envy viewed?
Where now thy might which all those kings subdued?
No martial myriads muster in thy gate;

No suppliant nations in thy Temple wait;
No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among,
Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song:
But lawless force, and meagre want are there,
And the quick-darting eye of restless fear,
While cold oblivion mid thy ruins laid,
Folds his dank wing beneath the ivy shade.

O happy once in Heaven's peculiar love,
Delight of men below, and saints above!
Though, Salem, now the spoiler's ruffian hand
Has loosed his hell-hounds o'er thy wasted land;

Though weak, and whelmed beneath the storms of fate,
Thy house is left unto thee desolate;

Though thy proud stones in cumbrous ruin fall,
And seas of sand o'ertop thy mouldering wall;
Yet shall the Muse to Fancy's ardent view
Each shadowy trace of faded pomp renew:
And as the seer on Pisgah's topmost brow
With glistening eye beheld the plain below,
With prescient ardor drank the scented gale,
And bade the opening glades of Canaan hail;
Her eagle eye shall scan the prospect wide,
From Carmel's cliffs to Almotana's tide;
The flinty waste, the cedar-tufted hill,
The liquid health of smooth Ardeni's rill;
The grot where, by the watchfire's evening blaze,
The robber riots, or the hermit prays;
Or where the tempest rives the hoary stone,
The wintry top of giant Lebanon.

*

For thee his ivory load Behemoth bore,
And far Sofala teemed with golden ore;
Thine all the arts that wait on wealth's increase,
Or bask and wanton in the beam of peace.
When Tiber slept beneath the cypress gloom,
And silence held the lonely woods of Rome;
Or e'er to Greece the builder's skill was known,
Or the light chisel brushed the Parian stone;
Yet here fair Science nursed her infant fire,
Fanned by the artist aid of friendly Tyre.
Then towered the palace, then in awful state
The temple reared its everlasting gate:

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