And I was left my nation's peace to see

Peace which my child had won, though not for me:

Farewell! our circle gathers in the sky,

And as they died in faith, so would I die.

Banningham, 1850.

NINEVEH.

“Opinionum commenta dies delet: naturæ judicia confirmat."
CIC. de Nat. Deor.

I.

WOE for the land of Asshur! she who sate
Queen of the nations, princess of the peers;
How sits she as a widow desolate,

In bitterness of soul and silent tears!

Great Nineveh is fallen! Pale with fears
She sits in her sepulchral greatness, hoary

With lapse of unknown centuries of years;
And strangers roam her haunts of sometime glory,
Deciphering with pain her once transparent story.

II.

Woe for the land of Asshur! she who nursed

The world's forefathers in her golden plains, And cradled by her mighty streams the first

Primeval race of heroes! What remains

F

Of all her trophies and colossal fanes?

Stern, shapeless heaps of ruin, mouldering slow Beneath the fiery sun and torrent rains :— Wild heedless hordes about her come and go :An unloved spectacle of unlamented woe.

III.

Woe for the land of Asshur!

Greece hath bow'd

Her head beneath the chariot-wheels of Time;

But sorrow, like a distant mountain-cloud,

Hath hung its lucid veil above her clime,

And only made her virtues more sublime.

All centuries have wept her fall, and sung

Her greatness and her grief in loftiest rhyme; And, lingering still her haunted fanes among, Repictured, from her age, her loveliness when young.

IV.

Woe for the land of Asshur! Salem lies,-
Salem, her former captive, lies in gloom;
And Zion, twice a widow, mourns and sighs,

And lingers, spectre-like, beside the tomb

Of her first bridal blessedness and bloom.

She mourns, but mourns in hope; for God hath spoken

The mystic number of her years of doom;

She waits the beacon-light, the Gospel token,

When stanch'd shall be her wounds, and all her chains be

broken.

V.

But woe for thee, O Asshur! Few bemoan
Thy giant desolations, void and vast;
No beauty smiles on thy sepulchral stone.
The solitary stranger stands aghast

At thee, but weeps not; and the fitful blast
Sighs in thy palaces. Nor canst thou borrow

Far hopes to cheer the present and the past;

No dawn shall glimmer on thy night of sorrow,
Its silence and its sadness hath no bright to-morrow.

VI.

What though above thy solitudes the Spring

Her fairy mantle ever throws anew;

Though smiles the early Summer, carpeting

Thy wastes with flowers of scarlet and of blue,

And tangled labyrinths of every hue?

To one who knew thee in thy prime it seems

A sad heart's laughter, to itself untrue ;

A captive's reverie, a widow's dreams,

The bubbles breaking fast on dark and troubled streams.

VII.

Where are thy frowning towers and scornful walls,

And spacious parks, by hanging gardens spann'd? Where are thy regal palaces, whose halls Of sculptured alabaster proudly stand,

The envy and the fame of every land,

Dyed purple and vermilion ; echoing

With bursts of song, by gales of fragrance fann'd ; Enrich'd with every great and gorgeous thing,Meet dwelling-place for thee, supreme Assyrian King?

VIII.

Where is thy stern array of warrior sons,-
The peerless maidens of Chaldea's bloom,-
The laughter of her myriad little ones;—

The voice of merchandise,—the mingled hum