One shade the more, one ray the less, Or softly lightens o'er her face; And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent! LORD BYRON.1 SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT. SHE was a phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; 1 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON, the descendant of a very old, noble, and distinguished family, of which he was the last representative, was born in 1788, and educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He had a head and face of great beauty, and an athletic frame, but he was deformed and incurably lame. His first verses were a failure; but on his return from travelling in the East, in 1811, he published the first two cantos of Childe Harold, and sprang at once into world-wide reputation. He married Miss Millbanke in 1815, and in the following year they separated. Lord Byron returned to voluntary exile on the Continent, and never came back to England. He headed an expedition for the liberation of Greece in 1823, and died at Missolonghi in 1824. He wrote many poems, and both the longer ones, like Childe Harold, and the short lyrics and songs, are among the greatest works of English poetry. His career was tarnished and his great genius sullied by reckless dissipation, by a bitter temper, and by an arrogant and vain dis Dosition. A lovely apparition, sent Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; I saw her upon nearer view, Her household motions, light and free, A countenance in which did meet And now I see with eye serene WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.1 1 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born in Cumberland in 1770, and was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He inher ted sufficient property to render him independent, and after living for a time in Dorsetshire, he finally established himself at HYMN FOR THE DEAD.1 THAT day of wrath, that dreadful day, When, shrivelling like a parched scroll, O! on that day, that wrathful day, Rydal Mount, among the English Lakes, where he remained until his death. He had a sinecure position under government, and subsequently a pension, and in 1843 he was made poetlaureate, on the death of Southey. He died in 1850. He was a prolific writer of verse, much of which is esteemed of great beauty, and he is considered by his admirers to hold the next place to Shakespeare and Milton, an opinion from which many persons dissent. He was the most famous of the "Lake School" of poets, and represented, perhaps, better than any one else, the reaction of the nineteenth century against the school of Pope, and the change from the highly artificial to the simple and natural in poetry. 1 This is a translation of a portion of the Dies Ira, the most famous hymn of the early church. Macaulay has translated the whole hymn, and other versions, including an excellent one by he late General Dix, are to be found in a little volume entitled The Saven Great Hymns of the Medieval Church. 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, 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 wither'd and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, And there lay the rider, distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail; And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, REBECCA'S HYMN. WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved, An awful guide in smoke and flame. There rose the choral hymn of praise, Forsaken Israel wanders lone : Our fathers would not know Thy ways, But present still, though now unseen! And O, when stoops on Judah's path Our harps we left by Babel's streams, And mute are timbrel, harp, and horn. |