The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the grasshopper’s--he takes the lead 5 In summer luxury,--he has never done With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost 10 Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The grasshopper’s among some grassy hills. _John Keats._ CCII _SONNET._ Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome, Ringing with echoes of Italian song: Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong, And all the pleasant place is like a home. Hark, on the right with full piano tone 5 Old Dante’s voice encircles all the air: Hark yet again, like flute-tones mingling rare, Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca’s moan. Pass thou the lintel freely; without fear Feast on the music. I do better know thee, 10 Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear That element whence thou must draw thy life-- An English maiden, and an English wife. _Arthur Henry Hallam._ CCIII _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, 5 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; 10 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, 15 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: 20 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! _Lord Byron._