Oh! thine be the gladness and mine be the guilt, Forgive me adored one--forsake if thou wilt, But the heart which I bear shall expire undebased, And man shall not break it--whatever thou mayest. And stern to the haughty--but humble to thee, My soul in its bitterest blackness shall be; And our days seem as swift--and our moments more sweet With thee by my side--than the world at our feet. One sigh of thy sorrow--one look of thy love Shall turn me or fix, shall reward or reprove; And the heartless may wonder at all we resign, Thy lip shall reply not to them--but to mine. Many of the best poetical pieces of Lord Byron, having the least amatory feeling, have been strangely distorted by his calumniators, as if applicable to the lamented circumstances of his latter life. The foregoing verses were written more than two years previously to his marriage; and to show how averse his lordship was from touching in the most distant manner upon the _theme_ which might be deemed to have a personal allusion, he requested me the morning before he last left London, either to suppress the verses entirely or to be careful in putting the date when they were originally written. At the close of his lordship's injunction, Mr. Leigh Hunt was announced, to whom I was for the first time introduced, and at his request I sang "O Marianne," and this melody, both of which he was pleased to eulogize; but his lordship again observed, "Notwithstanding my own partiality to the air, and the encomiums of an excellent judge, yet I must adhere to my former injunction." Observing his lordship's anxiety, and fully appreciating the noble feeling by which that anxiety was augmented, I acquiesced, in signifying my willingness to withhold the melody altogether from the public rather than submit him to any uneasiness. "No, Nathan," ejaculated his lordship, "I am too great an admirer of your music to suffer a single _phrase_ of it to be lost; I insist that you publish the melody, but by attaching to it the date it will answer every purpose, and it will prevent my lying under greater obligations than are absolutely necessary for the _liberal encomiums_ of my _friends_." IN THE VALLEY OF WATERS. In the valley of waters we wept o'er the day When the host of the stranger made Salem his prey, And our heads on our bosoms all droopingly lay, And our hearts were so full of the land far away. The song they demanded in vain--it lay still In our souls as the wind that hath died on the hill; They call'd for the harp--but our blood they shall spill Ere our right hand shall teach them one tone of their skill. All stringlessly hung on the willow's sad tree, As dead as her dead leaf those mute harps must be. Our hands may be fettered--our tears still are free, For our God and our glory--and Sion!--Oh thee. THEY SAY THAT HOPE IS HAPPINESS. "_Felix qui potuit ferum cognoscere causas_."--Virgil.