* * * * *

By day along th' astonished lands
The cloudy Pillar glided slow,
By night Arabia's crimson'd sands
Returned the fiery Column's glow.

* * * * *

And O, when gathers o'er our path
In shade and storm the frequent night
Be Thou, long suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining Light!

The "Hymn of Rebecca" has been set to music though never in common use
as a hymn. Old "Truro", by Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814) is a grand
Scotch psalm harmony for the words, though one of the Unitarian hymnals
borrows Zeuner's sonorous choral, the "Missionary Chant." Both sound the
lyric of the Jewess in good Christian music.

"WE SAT DOWN AND WEPT BY THE WATERS."

The 137th Psalm has been for centuries a favorite with poets and
poetical translators, and its pathos appealed to Lord Byron when engaged
in writing his _Hebrew Melodies_.

Byron was born in London, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Western Greece,
1824.

We sat down and wept by the waters
Of Babel, and thought of the day
When the foe, in the hue of his slaughters,
Made Salem's high places his prey,
And ye, Oh her desolate daughters,
Were scattered all weeping away.

--Written April, 1814. It was the fashion then for musical societies to
call on the popular poets for contributions, and tunes were composed for
them, though these have practically passed into oblivion.

Byron's ringing ballad (from II Kings 19:35)--

Th' Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,

--has been so much a favorite for recitation and declamation that the
loss of its tune is never thought of.

Another poetic rendering of the "Captivity Psalm" is worthy of notice
among the lay hymns not unworthy to supplement clerical sermons. It was
written by the Hon. Joel Barlow in 1799, and published in a pioneer
psalm-book at Northampton, Mass. It is neither a translation nor
properly a hymn but a poem built upon the words of the Jewish lament,
and really reproducing something of its plaintive beauty. Two stanzas of
it are as follows:

Along the banks where Babel's current flows
Our captive bands in deep despondence strayed,
While Zion's fall in deep remembrance rose,
Her friends, her children mingled with the dead.

The tuneless harps that once with joy we strung