And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clinchèd hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

25

The pall of a past world; and then again

30

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked, And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food!
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again :-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

35

40

All earth was but one thought—and that was death

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails-men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

45

The meager by the meager were devoured,

Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,

50

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand

Which answered not with a caress-he died.

The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,

55

And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar place

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

Each other's aspects-saw, and shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,

70

And nothing stirred within their silent depths;

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

75

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge-

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before; The winds were withered in the stagnant air, And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need Of aid from them-She was the Universe! DIODATI, July, 1816.

80

THE DESTRUCTION OF SEN

NACHERIB.1

I.

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

II.

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.

III.

For the Angel of Death 2 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!

5

ΙΟ

1 This musical lyric is a good specimen of Byron's Hebrew Melodies, of which there are twenty, a few of the most noted being those entitled Vision of Belshazzar, She Walks in Beauty, and The Wild Gazelle. Compare the poem with Thomas Moore's Sound the Loud Timbrel, a still finer Hebrew melody. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, reigned from B.C. 705 to 681.

2 "And the Lord sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valor,

IV.

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.

V.

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.

VI.

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!

15

20

and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. turned with shame of face to his own land" (II. Chronicles xxxii. 21).

So he re

1 Thomas Moore, Byron's friend and biographer, an Irish poet (born 1779, died 1852), author of many beautiful songs,