Here on this height-still to aspire,

One only path remains untrod,

One path of love and peace climbs higher! Make straight that highway for our God!" Alfred Noyes [1880

THE ONLY SON

O BITTER wind toward the sunset blowing,
What of the dales to-night?

In yonder gray old hall what fires are glowing,
What ring of festal light?

"In the great window as the day was dwindling I saw an old man stand;

His head was proudly held and his eyes kindling, But the list shook in his hand.”

O wind of twilight, was there no word uttered, No sound of joy or wail?

"'A

great fight and a good death,' he muttered; Trust him, he would not fail."

What of the chamber dark where she was lying For whom all life is done?

"Within her heart she rocks a dead child, crying

'My son, my little son.'"

Henry Newbolt [1862

POEMS OF HISTORY

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB

[710 B. C.]

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 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 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 Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

George Gordon Byron [1788-1824]

THE VISION OF BELSHAZZAR

[538 B. C.]

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 divine,— Jehovah's vessels hold

The godless Heathen's wine!

In that same hour and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,

And wrote as if on sand:
The fingers of a man;—
A solitary hand

Along the letters ran,

And traced them like a wand.

The monarch saw, and shook,
And bade no more rejoice;
All bloodless waxed his look,
And tremulous his voice.
"Let the men of lore appear,
The wisest of the earth,
And expound the words of fear,
Which mar our royal mirth."

Chaldea's seers are good,

But here they have no skill; And the unknown letters stood, Untold and awful still.

And Babel's men of age

Are wise and deep in lore;

But now they were not sage,

They saw, but knew no more.

Horatius at the Bridge

A captive in the land,
A stranger and a youth,
He heard the King's command,
He saw that writing's truth.
The lamps around were bright,
The prophecy in view:
He read it on that night,-
The morrow proved it true.

"Belshazzar's grave is made,
His kingdom passed away,
He, in the balance weighed,
Is light and worthless clay;
The shroud, his robe of state,
His canopy, the stone;

The Mede is at his gate!

The Persian on his throne!"

2257

George Gordon Byron [1788-1824]

HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE

[C. 496 B. C.]

LARS PORSENA of Clusium

By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin

Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting-day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,

To summon his array.

East and west and south and north

The messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage

Have heard the trumpet's blast.

Shame on the false Etruscan

Who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome.

From many a stately market-place,
From many a fruitful plain,
From many a lonely hamlet,

Which, hid by beech and pine,

Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine;

From lordly Volaterræ

Where scowls the far-famed hold

Piled by the hands of giants

For godlike kings of old;
From sea-girt Populonia,
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops
Fringing the southern sky;

From the proud mart of Pisa,
Queen of the western waves,
Where ride Massilia's triremes

Heavy with fair-haired slaves;
From where sweet Clanis wanders

Through corn and vines and flowers, From where Cortona lifts to heaven Her diadem of towers.

Tall are the oaks whose acorns

Drop in dark Auser's rill;

Fat are the stags that champ the boughs

Of the Ciminian hill;

Beyond all streams, Clitumnus

Is to the herdsman dear;

Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.

But now no stroke of woodman

Is heard by Auser's rill;

No hunter tracks the stag's green path Up the Ciminian hill;