Over my heart in the days that are flown
No love like mother love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures—
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours;
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and world weary brain.
Slumber’s soft calms o’er the heavy lids creep—
Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep.
Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
Let it drop over my forehead tonight,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
For with its sunny edged shadows once more
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
Lovingly, softly its bright billows sweep;
Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep.
Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
Since I last hushed to your lullaby song;
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep—
Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.
BY LORD BYRON.
Lord Byron was born in London in 1788. His first volume of verses, entitled “Hours of Idleness,” was printed in 1807. “Manfred” and “The Lament of Tasso” were written in 1817. From 1818 to his death Byron was occupied on “Don Juan.” In 1823 he went to Greece, and with advice and money aided in the Greek struggle for independence. He died in Greece in 1824.
“And it came to pass, that night, that the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred four score and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.”—II. Kings, xix., 35.
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 breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved—and forever grew still.
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll’d 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.