THE SHEPHERDS' PLAIN.

167

THE OLD JEW ON MOUNT MORIAH. HE stood bewildered on his lonely hearth, Sadness was written on his fixèd brow, For he had witnessed days of holy mirth Where silence dwells, and desolation now. The grief he felt he cared not to avow; Calmly he stood, yet sorrowfully too, The latest leaf upon the topmost bough Of the green olive that so lately threw Aloft its leafy arms when the glad spring was

new.

Friendless and homeless! How unlike the past! Once honoured scion of a noble stem; But now forsaken, desolate, the last Brightj ewel of a kingly diadem;

The last dim dew- drop of all those that gem The still lone valley when the sun- beams fall He trod his ancient hills, but found on them Nought but his shivered altar- shrines, for all Was tomb- like hushed, and dark as with a funeral pall.

THE SHEPHERDS' PLAIN.

" Dum servant oves invenerunt Agnum Dei."- JEROME.

BLESSED night, when first that plain Echoed with the joyful strain ,­" Peace has come to earth again."