"Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn, Mourn, widowed Queen, forgotten Sion, mourn! Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne, Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone, While suns unbless'd their angry lustre fling, And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring? Where now thy pomp which kings with envy viewed, Where now thy might which all those kings subdued? No martial myriads muster in thy gate; No suppliant nations in thy Temple wait; No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among, Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song. But lawless Force and meager Want are there, And the quick-darting eye of restless Fear; While cold Oblivion, 'mid thy ruins laid, Folds his dark wing beneath thy ivy shade."[44] The seventy years which were determined concerning Jerusalem began, not at the demolition of the city by Nebuzar-adan, the captain of the guard, but at the date of the former invasion by his master, in the reign of Jehoiakim, when the Assyrians carried away some of the princes, and among others Daniel and his celebrated companions, as captives, or perhaps as hostages for the good conduct of the king. The event now alluded to took place exactly six centuries before the Christian era; and hence the return of the Jews to the Holy Land must have occurred about the year 530 prior to the same great epoch. But as their migration homeward was gradually accomplished under different leaders, and with various objects in view, their historians have not thought it necessary to enter into particulars; and hence has arisen a certain obscurity in the calculations of divines respecting the commencement, the duration, and the end of the Babylonian captivity.