And sorrow's wing had cast a shade Upon my sister's smile, Had checked the voice of gladsome mirth, And bounding step the while; And when the bright spring came again, And clouds forsook the sky, Then I knelt down and thanked my God There was a time to die. THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. The sunset on Judah's high places grew pale, And purple tints shadowed the gorge and the vale, While Venus in beauty, with dilating eye, Out-riding the star-host, looked down from the sky On the city that struggled with foemen below,-- Jerusalem, peerless in grandeur and woe! O'er the fast crumbling walls thronged the cohorts of Rome, Their batteries thundered on palace and dome, And the children of Israel in voiceless despair At the foot of the Temple had breathed a last prayer; For their armies were spent in the unequal strife, And Famine was maddening the pulses of life, The pestilence lurked in the zephyr's soft breath, And the gall-drops were poured from the drawn sword of Death. The Night with starred garments moved noiseless on high, When they felt a hot blast on the cool air draw nigh;-- Did pinions infernal rejoicing sweep by? They beheld a wild flash o'er the firmament shine;-- Came there aid from above,--a legation divine? There is fire on the mount, there is smoke in the air; The red flames shoot upward with bright, spectral glare; Men of Jacob, draw nigh, but like Moses unshod, 'T is the shrine of Jehovah, the temple of God. The cherubim drooped and the pomegranates lay In the dust with the lamps that had glimmered all day; The censers and altar the ashes must claim, Though their unalloyed gold be the gold of Parvaim. Fierce raged the consumer insatiate and strong, And cursed was its light by that soul-stricken throng, Who beheld their destruction and anguish and shame, Engraved by the lurid and forked tongues of flame, On pillar and pommel and chapiter high, Distinct as the law they had dared to defy, Was traced through the cloud where the Deity shone By the finger of God on the tablets of stone; They beheld e'en the Holy of Holies consume; Then with frenzied bemoaning lamented their doom.