And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
15 The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent.
A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.

THE Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the

sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

5 Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is

green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath

blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

10 And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and

chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his

pride;

15 And the foam of his gasping lay white on the

turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail,

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, 20 The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

WILLIAM COWPER.1

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

COWPER was twenty years old when Gray's Elegy was published, for he was born November 26, 1731. A few years after Gray's death, Cowper, then forty-six years old, wrote to a friend: "I have been reading Gray's works, and think him the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the character of sublime." Probably he was thinking of Gray's odes when he wrote thus; he himself had a temperament and a poetic gift which might make him admire sublimity in others without a particle of regret for the lack of it in his own verse. Gray wrote his odes in the grand style; he was a scholar who kept up the traditions of great poetry. Cowper, with a similar early training in classical literature, lived away from universities and cities, in a flat pastoral country, and wrote his poems partly for diversion, partly because, in the leisure he had, this was an agreeable occupation to which his friends urged him, but most of all because his poetic nature gently stirred him. He wrote under the influence of a placid country life and a strong though not always tranquil religious feeling, and the simplicity of his themes found in his truthful, conscientious spirit a simple expression, so that he was a forerunner in some ways of Wordsworth. He was a contemporary of Goldsmith, and they had in common a directness and naturalness in poetry, but Goldsmith, even when writing of rural scenes, was a town 1 Pronounced Cooper, some members of the family so spelling the name.