The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
A dagger as our women of the coast

Twist in their garters.

Father, I have done :

And from her side now she unwinds the thick
Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change.
Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
I have told all tell me at once what hope
Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
Soon, when she shows the crimson steel to God.

THE BURDEN OF NINEVEH.

IN our Museum galleries

To-day I lingered o'er the prize

Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,-

Her Art for ever in fresh wise

From hour to hour rejoicing me.
Sighing I turned at last to win

Once more the London dirt and din;
And as I made the swing-door spin
And issued, they were hoisting in
A winged beast from Nineveh.

A human face the creature wore,
And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.

'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,

A dead disbowelled mystery:

The mummy of a buried faith

Stark from the charnel without scathe,
Its wings stood for the light to bathe,-
Such fossil cerements as might swathe
The very corpse of Nineveh.

The print of its first rush-wrapping,
Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.

What song did the brown maidens sing,
From purple mouths alternating,

When that was woven languidly?

What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd, What songs has the strange image heard?

In what blind vigil stood interr'd

For ages, till an English word

Broke silence first at Nineveh ?

Oh when upon each sculptured court,
Where even the wind might not resort,-
O'er which Time passed, of like import
With the wild Arab boys at sport,—

A living face looked in to see :-
O seemed it not-the spell once broke—
As though the carven warriors woke,

As though the shaft the string forsook,
The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,

And there was life in Nineveh?

On London stones our sun anew

The beast's recovered shadow threw.

(No shade that plague of darkness knew,

No light, no shade, while older grew

By ages the old earth and sea.)

Lo thou could all thy priests have shown
Such proof to make thy godhead known?
From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;

And still thy shadow is thine own,
Even as of yore in Nineveh.

That day whereof we keep record,

When near thy city-gates the Lord
Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,
This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd

Even thus this shadow that I see.

This shadow has been shed the same

From sun and moon,—from lamps which came

For prayer, from fifteen days of flame,
The last, while smouldered to a name

Sardanapalus' Nineveh.

*

Within thy shadow, haply, once

Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons

Smote him between the altar-stones :
Or pale Semiramis her zones

Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
In love for grace, in war for aid :

Ay, and who else? . . . . till 'neath thy shade
Within his trenches newly made

Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—

Not to thy strength-in Nineveh.*

Now, thou poor god, within this hall

Where the blank windows blind the wall

From pedestal to pedestal,

The kind of light shall on thee fall

Which London takes the day to be:

While school-foundations in the act

Of holiday, three files compact,

Shall learn to view thee as a fact

Connected with that zealous tract:

'ROME,-Babylon and Nineveh.'

During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their services in the shadow of the great bulls.—(Layard's ‘Nineveh,' ch. ix.)