Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more. Of nature, and though poor perhaps, compared The next piece is taken from the portion of The Task entitled 'The Winter Walk at Noon,' and is part of a description of the restoration of all things: Error has no place: That creeping pestilence is driven away: 'Worthy is the Lamb, for He was slain for us!' Saw never, such as heaven stoops down to see. 1 An island at the entrance of the Persian Gulf; a mere barren rock now, but once the opulent seat of a flourishing Portuguese settlement. M LESSON 35. POETS AND THEIR POETRY. III. LORD BYRON. This poet was born, like the first one we noticed, in the very matter-of-fact city of London, in 1788. His early years were singularly unhappy, and no doubt tended in some measure to form that life which was at one time the idol and the reproach of the English nation. When he was very young, his mother separated from her husband; and his own marriage, twenty years afterwards, was so unhappy that, in less than twelve months, he separated from his wife. Although affectionate, he was passionate and revengeful; and this, with a lameness that attended him, rendered him shunned rather than sought for by his school-fellows. After leaving the University of Cambridge, he travelled through Turkey and Greece, and then returned to London, to plunge into all the gaiety and pleasures of the metropolis. When the insurrection of the Greeks broke out in 1821, he resolved to devote himself entirely by fortune, pen, and sword to assist them in obtaining their independence. Accordingly, he went to Greece in 1823, but from a fever he died at Missolonghi the following year, at the age of thirty-six. His principal works are, Childe Harold, Don Juan, The Bride of Abydos, and the Hebrew Melodies, from the last of which our selections have been taken. THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 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 strewn. 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 for ever 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 Gentiles, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord. THE VISION OF BELSHAZZAR. The king was on his throne, the satraps thronged the hall : A thousand bright lamps shone o'er that high festival. A thousand cups of gold, in Judah deemed divineJehovah's vessels hold the godless heathen's wine. |