The Two Brothers, and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

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

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

Of citizens, and pilgrims who have come
From far to view her greatness;—the low sighs
Of love,—the strains of music never dumb,—
The banquetings beneath her azure skies,
Or long luxurious dance of torch-light revelries?

IX

Where is the idol faith that once was hers,—
The victims on her altars wont to bleed?
Her temples, throng'd with prostrate worshippers,
And guarded by that winged-lion breed—
The awful symbols of a perish'd creed,
Whose forms of might their portals still defend;
Whose wings betoken omnipresent speed;
And brows of lofty human mould portend
The knowledge of the gods and wisdom without end?

X

Oh, weep for Nineveh!—the scorn or pity,
From age to age, of every passer by.
“Is this,” they ask , “the glad, rejoicing city,
Who said,—‘I am, and none beside me’? Why

Doth she in wreck and desolation lie?”
Great Nineveh is fallen! Transitory
As slopes a meteor through the midnight sky;—
Who shall repaint her vanish'd scenes of glory,
Or weave her shatter'd woof of fragmentary story?

XI

Though gorgeous fictions have been pass'd along
The half-incredulous ages down to this,—
What boots it to relate, in idle song,
How Ninus and divine Semiramis
First founded yonder vast metropolis;
And left a lineage of kings, whose names
Stand tomb-like o'er oblivion's dark abyss,
Until, to hide his everlasting shames,
Sardanapalus lit his country's funeral flames?

XII

Thus, o'er the keen blue night of northern climes
A rose-blush, as of morning, seems to glow;
With waves of undulating light at times,
And ruddy jets of flame that come and go,

And fitful meteors flashing to and fro,—
A dome of living splendours; but anon
Gloom settles on those silent wastes of snow;
The colours fade like dreams, and all is wan,
Save intermittent starlight, dimly glimmering on.

XIII

Thus rose and sank those myths of by-gone ages:
Swiftly they sank, and darkness block'd my sight;
Till suddenly, from Inspiration's pages,
There flash'd a few and flickering beams of light
On distant fragments of Assyria's night.
So have I wander'd in some giant cave,
Whose sides of rock and pendent stalactite
Caught radiance from my torch, at times, and gave
A momentary brightness to some gushing wave.

XIV

And first, far looming in the mist of years,
Stood Nimrod , mighty in the sight of God,—
Lord of the chase; before him earth appears
Strewn with the desolations of the flood,

But limitless and lordless. Forth he stood,
First King of men, and, ranging in the free
Far forests with his teeming multitude,
Where Tigris rolls to Persia's emerald sea,
Builded, for his great name, the infant Nineveh.

XV

Thus clothed his form in brightness, and then fail'd
The beam reflected from the sacred page;
And close, impenetrable darkness veil'd
The long succeeding ages. Age on age,
Basking in peace, or tost with warfare's rage,
They pass'd before my musing sight once more;
Their voices did my lingering ear engage;
The hum of teeming myriads, like the roar
Of mighty waters chafing on an unseen shore.

XVI

Long while I mused her story, how she grew
Alone in greatness, and in guilt alone;
Until they left the God their fathers knew,
And shadow'd forth the unseen Eternal One

In idol images of brass and stone.
(Fools! though the earth too mean a footstool were,
The starry heavens for Him too base a throne)
Till God, at length, in wrath abandon'd her,
O her own lusts to be the slave and worshipper.

XVII

In greatness and in wickedness she grew:
Ambition's lurid and deceptive star
To distant lands her conquering armies drew,
And fill'd her streets with sights and sounds of war,—
The chariot and the glancing scimitar:
Debasing lust her native homes defiled
With tears of hapless virgins brought from far:
Her heaps of gold insatiate avarice piled;
And pleasure, with young hopes, her votaries beguiled.

XVIII

Thus great in glory, and too great in crime,
The upland slope of fame she seem'd to tread;
And on from height to giddy height did climb,
And fix'd her dwelling 'mid the stars, and said,

“No thunders there could scathe her lofty head.”
Was there no voice her peril to proclaim,
Ere her proud sons were number'd with the dead?
Hark! as I ponder'd o'er her shatter'd fame,
In rugged uncouth verse, the mystic answer came.

“This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation.” —Zeph. ii. 15.

See Dictionary of Biography, under Ninus.

Gen. x. 8—11.

Calmly glow'd the setting sun
Upon the dark of Lebanon;
Till, ere it sank, each cedar spire
Was clad in a robe of golden fire,
And a smile of light broke gloriously
On the sullen waves of the Western sea.
Far off, on Carmel's rocky fell,
There sate the seer of Israel;
He watch'd the dying gleams of day
From tide and turret fade away,
And deeply he sigh'd for the land of God,
And inly murmur'd, “Ichabod.”
He look'd again, a flash of light
On the far horizon's deepening night!
Loth to quit so fair a clime,
Hath the sun reversed the march of time?

Or is it the reflex glory cast
From mighty meteors streaming past?
His prophetic eye divine
More truly read that sacred sign:
He felt that a message from God was near,
And he bow'd his head in silent prayer.
“Go forth, go forth, thou prophet of the Lord
(Thus thrill'd his soul the penetrating word):
Against that great and guilty city cry,
Whose wickedness hath reach'd to heaven; for I,
The Lord Jehovah, have commission'd thee
A herald of my wrath to Nineveh.”

A tempest shook the prophet's soul,
And trembling seized him past control.
Not the march through far-off lands,
Not the blasts of desert sands,
Not the taunts and proud despite
Of the godless Ninevite,
Not the wrathful threatenings
Of the Assyrian king of kings,

Not the leaguéd hosts of hell,
Moved the seer of Israel.
Yet shook he like a wind-tost oak to go
Proclaiming wrath and woe;
For well he knew how mercy dwelt above,
And deeply had experienced “God is love .”

Jonah iv. 2.

Dark tempest on the waters: see, they rise
Faster and fiercer round that little bark!
Her mariners with agonizing cries
Betake them to their gods for aid, but dark
Still lay the tempest on the waters: dark
Grew every face, and darker grew the skies:
They strew'd the billows with their Tyrian wares,
Redoubling their wild prayers.
Till lo, quoth one, “Yon strange and fearful man
Calmly hath slumber'd since the storm began.—
What meanest thou, O sleeper! rise and call
Upon thy God to bend His gracious ear,
And think on us in pity, ere we all
Together perish here.”

Then rose the prophet Jonah—calm his mien,
In its stern sadness awfully serene—
One glance he took upon the raging main,
Then slowly scann'd that trembling crew again.
His steady eye disturb'd them; for the change
Wrought in his slumber seem'd unearthly strange.
Surely in that profound, mysterious dream
The Lord his God hath spoken unto him,
Who hitherto had ever seem'd to live
In terror, like a guilty fugitive,
But now, amid the storm stood forth alone
The only fearless one.
“Who art thou?” tremblingly they ask'd, “and what
Thy country and thy race?”—He trembled not,
But prophet-like replied:
“I am a Hebrew, and I bow the knee
To Him who made the heaven and earth and sea:
Fear not, but cast me in the raging tide,
Because for me yon raging billows roar,—
And peace shall tend you to your distant shore.”

Oh, unexampled faith, unequall'd trust
Placed in his God by a frail child of dust!

Hosanna! from the caverns of the grave,
Beneath the ocean wave,
Climbs to the throne of God through sea and air,
The voice of confidence and praise and prayer
Hell, who had gloried in the prophet's fall,
And gloated o'er her coming carnival,
Heard it and trembled—dark, mysterious sign
Of that predicted Conqueror Divine,
Whose advent was the token
Of chains and fetters broken,
Who, buried like that seer beneath the earth,
Should mar the triumph of her fiendish mirth,
And wrest the ponderous keys of death away,
And lead captivity his captive prey.

Jonah's prayer, rising at its close to a song of praise, was uttered before his deliverance.—Jonah ii. 1—9.

Matt. xii. 39—41.

It was the glow of eventide—behold
Upon his throne of ivory and gold,
Assyria's monarch proudly gazed around,
While prostrate kings before him kiss'd the ground.
When lo! a messenger in haste is brought,
His blanch'd cheeks with a tale of danger fraught:—

“This livelong day,” he falter'd, “there hath been
A prophet such as earth hath never seen,
From street to street who wanders sad and slow,
With one stern message of impending woe—
‘Ere forty suns have risen on Nineveh,
‘Her guilt and glory shall have ceased to be.’”

Straightway a smile of proud derision curl'd
The lip of that proud monarch of the world;
But, ere he spake, his courtiers crowded near,
And pour'd into his ear,
What busy fame had spread from lip to lip,—
The story of that tempest-shatter'd ship,
And that unheard-of miracle, that bore
The Prophet Jonah to his destined shore.
Long while he grappled with his fears, and then
Look'd round his court in marvel; and again
He gazed upon those floods of radiance bright
Which bathed his palace in their golden light,
And shed fresh lustre on the vivid story,
Which glow'd in sculpture, of his deeds of glory.
What storms could gather in these cloudless skies?
Who dared to call themselves his enemies?

He would have spoken; but again he hears
That death-knell in his ears—
“Ere forty suns have risen on Nineveh,
Her guilt and glory shall have ceased to be!”
And Conscience whisper'd, 'Tis Jehovah saith,
Till dread conviction ripen'd into faith.
He rose from off his kingly throne of state;
He laid aside his purple robe; he sate
In sackcloth and in ashes: his decree
Sped with wild speed through guilty Nineveh:
And all men trembled, and obey'd the word—
“Let neither man, nor cattle, flock, nor herd,
Or food or water taste by night or day;
But turn ye from the evil of your way,
And mightily implore the God of heaven,
If it may be our crimes can be forgiven.”

Though the stern struggle of his mission o'er,
The fainting prophet is himself no more;
Though seeing Nineveh is spared, he prays
To finish here his days:

Scorn not the weakness of his faithless fear,
But bend with him a reverential ear,
And catch those gracious accents from above,
Which fill'd his soul with tenderness and love:—
“Thou hast had pity on thy gourd's delight,
Which came, and grew, and wither'd in a night;
Shall I not pity Nineveh, wherein
Are numberless and guiltless herds and sheep,
And infants weeping while their mothers weep,
But knowing nothing of their mothers' sin?”

Ah, silence here is eloquent—he heard—
His heart was touch'd—he answer'd not a word.

XIX

Thus lower'd the storm of vengeance, drear and dark:
Its folds of ruin wrapp'd the noon-day sky:
Heaven's thunders murmur'd coming wrath. But hark!
From that great city one repentant cry
Rose like a fragrant incense-cloud on high.

And mercy pleaded and prevail'd: it pass'd,
And left her in her scatheless majesty:
The blue heavens smiled, so lately overcast,
Of her unclouded skies the loveliest and the last.

XX

Woe to the land of Asshur!—after-years
Too soon forgat the warning voice of Heaven:
And mock'd derisively their fathers' fears,
And proudly strove with God as they had striven,
Unheeding, unrepentant, unforgiven.
Ah, woe for Nineveh—the tempest lay
From off the skirts of her horizon driven,
But ready to descend with baleful sway
The moment God announced her fatal judgment-day.

XXI

Have ye exhausted all the mines of Ind?
Have Egypt's dark-brow'd captives all been sold?
Or doth the idle unproductive wind
No more from Tarshish waft her stores untold
Of spices and of purple and of gold?

Why grasp ye at the solitary gem,
Which, from all jewels of the earth, of old
The Lord hath chosen for his diadem—
The favourite land of heaven—beloved Jerusalem?

XXII

Oh weep with weeping Israel! Broken-hearted,
Far off she mourns, the Gentile's prisoner:
Her beauty and her bloom hath all departed,
For her transgressions great and grievous were;
And therefore hath the Lord afflicted her .
Like some wild vision of the night it seems—
Her old men crave a speedy sepulchre;
Her sons in fetters foster hopeless dreams;
Her daughters hang their harps by far ungenial streams.

XXIII

Yet half the tempest fell not: Jordan still
Fenced Carmel's forest and Siloah's spring.
But lo, a darker tempest-cloud of ill!
Innumerable hosts were marshalling
Beneath the banners of Assyria's king—

Wilt thou not manifest thy glory there?
Wilt thou not spread, O Lord, thy guardian wing?
Wilt thou not listen to that piercing prayer?
“Spare us, O Lord our God—spare us, Jehovah, spare.”

XXIV

On like a vulture to the field of doom
Sennacherib came hasting thro' the land;
He march'd in vengeance, like the fierce Simoom
With clouds and pillars of hot burning sand,
That sweeps o'er Afric's desolated strand.
Proudly he taunted Heaven, and ask'd in wrath,
What God or man his armies could withstand?
Fool, fool, who never in his blood-stain'd path
Had wrestled with the calm omnipotence of faith.

XXV

'Twas midnight, when the angel of the Lord
Went forth and look'd upon that teeming glen,
And waved above that host his silent sword;
Nor sheathed the fearful blade of death again
Till more than eighteen myriads of men

Slept their last slumber on the blasted heath.
In fear the scanty remnant fled, and when
The morning rose, no living man drew breath
In that vast host of slain—that silent camp of death .

XXVI

But woe to thee, Assyria, who hast striven
To mock Jehovah with thine impious tongue;
Guard thine own city from the bolts of heaven!
Thy hour is coming. Zion's virgin young
Already hath thy funeral dirges sung:
Already Israel's bard has seized the lyre ,
The awful lyre of prophecy, and flung
These scathing words of heaven's avenging ire,
To brand thy withering pride with everlasting fire.

Lamentations i. 5.

Isa. xxxviii.

Nahum; he appears to have uttered his burden of Nineveh, which the writer has attempted to paraphrase in the following lines, the very year, b.c. 713, in which Sennacherib invaded Judæa.

'Tis the Lord—'tis the Lord—'tis the glorious God,
He hath smitten the earth with the curse of His rod,

And the nations stand at His judgment-seat:
The lightnings and thunders His mission perform,
The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
He rebuketh the sea, and a desert is made,
And the rivers are dust at His word,
And Bashan, and Carmel, and Lebanon fade,
And the earth is consumed, and the hills are dismay'd,
The depths of the mountains are stirr'd.
Say, who can stand in His anger's path
When his fury descends like fire?
Say, who can abide the heat of His wrath,
For the rocks are rent by His ire?

The Lord is good, and a hiding-place
For those who in trouble seek His face;
Behold, on the mountains are those who tell
Of peace and salvation to Israel.

Proud Nineveh! are thy watchers dumb?
The hosts that shall dash thee in pieces are come.
Ho! man the ramparts, watch the way,
And set thy battle's fierce array:

The shields of thy mighty men are red,
And thy valiant men are in scarlet clad;
Like flaming torches thy chariots seem,
And run like the lightning's vivid gleam,
And the cry resounds through those dense alarms,
Stand, Asshur, stand—To arms! To arms!
Huzzab is fallen: void and vast,
All at her death-pangs stand aghast;
And the loins are loosed with pain at her doom,
And the faces of all men gather gloom.
Where is the lions' rifled lair?
The dens of prey and of ravine, where?
Woe to the bloody city, woe!
The Lord hath smitten her, and lo!
Drunken she staggers to and fro.
Who lately sate a Princess seeming,
With witcheries and whoredoms teeming;
And far her proud defiance hurl'd,
The harlot empress of the world;—
How is she dragg'd in chains along!
Why beats she her breast at the victor's song?
How lies she friendless, shelterless,
In guilt, and shame, and nakedness!

The gazing-stock of those who were
Once slaves and sycophants of her!
The sharp fire burns like the cankerworm,
And the sword has defiled thy alluring form;
But never hath a balm been found
To heal thy everlasting wound.
Earth waves exultingly its hand
O'er thee, the scourge of every land.

XXVII

These harpings ceased, and when I look'd again,
Fire, sword, and famine their fell work had done.
The city lay in ruin on the plain:
Her shrines, her palaces, her monarch's throne,
One mingled mass of crumbling earth and stone.
Time digg'd thy grave, and heap'd the dust on thee;
Soon died the echo of thy dying groan;
And travellers, who came thy wreck to see,
Ask'd, and received no answer—Where is Nineveh?

XXVIII

. . . It is the evening of the world. The sun
Casts level shadows o'er its restless tide;
And though dense clouds, before his race be run,

Betoken coming tempest, in their pride
The nations still all signs of night deride,
And to and fro are hurrying thro' the earth
By ancient tracks or pathways yet untried
To satisfy their souls' insatiate dearth
With riches or with fame, or pleasure's idiot-mirth.

XXIX

Men throng all paths of knowledge, urging still
Into the vast unknown their perilous way;
Wielding all powers of nature to their will,
To-day they spurn the speed of yesterday,
And travel with the storms, nor brook delay.
And swifter than the eagle's swiftest wing
They bind their words upon the lightning's ray,
And from the elements new virtues wring,
To sound the lowest depths of truth's exhaustless spring.

XXX

Men throng all paths of knowledge. Science dives
Below the ocean's bed, the mountain's base,
And from the bowels of creation rives
Those monumental stones which dimly trace

Earth's primal story: then she soars apace
Above our little orb, and speeds afar
Mid distant planets her unwearied chase,
Skirting their track as in a seraph's car
From luminous world to world, from gorgeous star to star.

XXXI

Men throng all paths of knowledge. It might seem
Earth was now launch'd upon the early source
Of time's illimitably-flowing stream;
But trace the windings of her backward course,
Her centuries of crime and dark remorse,
And learn these struggles ne'er can be renew'd;—
The feverish efforts of exhausted force,—
The latest ebb of strength almost subdued,—
The sure and fearful signs of near decrepitude.

XXXII

See how upon those ancient haunts she dwells,
Where first her prowess and her power began;
And lingers there instinctively, and tells
Her antique story like an aged man,

Telling what races in his youth he ran,
And all the trophies of his early prime;
Too conscious that his brief remaining span
Waits only for the solemn passing chime,
To warn us he hath done with all the things of time.

XXXIII

She treads again the wastes of Babylon,
And roams amid Etrurian tombs once more,
And fondly lingers where the setting sun
Gilds ancient Carthage, or the fabled shore,
Where Greece and Troy were lock'd in fight of yore,
And listens to their story as the last
Faint halo of a day too quickly o'er;
For soon her bright futurity shall cast
Into deep twilight shade the glory of the past.

XXXIV

And what although this latest age hath riven
The veil which hides thy shames, O Nineveh,
From all the taunts of earth and frowns of heaven;
Though distant nations crave admiringly

Some relic or some monument of thee;
Though from far lands the lonely traveller
Wanders thy ruin and thy wreck to see;—
Who shall recall to life the things that were?
Or wake the spectral forms of thy vast sepulchre?

XXXV

No, while the ages of this shatter'd world
Roll slowly to the final term of time,
There shalt thou lie in desolation, hurl'd
By vengeance from that pinnacle sublime
Whereon thou satest in thy glory's prime—
By travellers of every nation trod,
Jehovah's warning unto every clime,
Scathed with His anger, smitten with His rod,
And witnessing to man the eternal truth of God.

Banningham, 1851.