LAYS OF PALESTINE.
No. IX.
(For the Church of England Magazine.)
By T. G. Nicholas.
“She hath given up the ghost; her sun is gone down while it was yet day.”—Jer. xv. 9.
“Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.”—Ps. lxxx. 19.
’Tis eventide; the golden tints are dying
Along the horizon’s glowing verge away;
Far in the groves the nightingale is sighing
Her requiem to the last receding ray;
And still thou holdest thy appointed way.
But Salem’s light is quench’d.—Majestic sun!
Her beauteous flock hath wandered far astray,
Led by their guides the path of life to shun;
Her orb hath sunk ere yet his wonted course was run.
In ages past all glorious was thy land,
And lovely were thy borders, Palestine!
The heavens were wont to shed their influence bland
On all those mountains and those vales of thine;
For o’er thy coasts resplendent then did shine
The light of God’s approving countenance,
With rapturous glow of blessedness divine;
And, ’neath the radiance of that mighty glance,
Bask’d the wide-scatter’d isles o’er ocean’s blue expanse.
But there survives a tinge of glory yet
O’er all thy pastures and thy heights of green,
Which, though the lustre of thy day hath set,
Tells of the joy and splendour which hath been:
So some proud ruin, ’mid the desert seen
By traveller, halting on his path awhile,
Declares how once beneath the light serene
Of brief prosperity’s unclouded smile,
Uprose in grandeur there some vast imperial pile.
O Thou, who through the wilderness of old
Thy people to their promis’d rest did’st bring,
Hasten the days by prophet-bards foretold,
When roses shall again be blossoming
In Sharon, and Siloa’s cooling spring
Shall murmur freshly at the noon-tide hour;
And shepherds oft in Achor’s vale shall sing[Z]
The mysteries of that redeeming power
Which hath their ashes chang’d for beauty’s sunniest bower.[AA]
Thou had’st a plant of thy peculiar choice
A fruitful vine from Egypt’s servile shore
Thou mad’st it in the smile of heav’n rejoice;
But the ripe clusters which awhile it bore
Now purple on the verdant hills no more,
The wild-boar hath upon its branches trod;
Yet once again thy choicest influence pour,
Transplant it from this dim terrestrial sod,
To adorn with deathless bloom the paradise of God.
Wadh. Coll. Oxon.