With such a horrid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang.

1

While the red fire and smouldering clouds out

brake:

The aged earth aghast

With terror of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake;

When, at the world's last session,

The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread he

throne.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

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1

But now begins; for, from this happy day,

The old Dragon, under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway;

And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the step of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the propheto

cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament,

From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting genius is with sighing sent;

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets

Bourn

L

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

'The Lars, and Lemures, moan with midnight

plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint s And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine, And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thamma

mourn.

And sullen Moloch, filed,

Hath left in shadows dread

* His burning idol all of blackest hue;

In vain with cymbal's ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blueh

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, baste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,T

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings

loud :

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest;

7

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud: In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd

He feels from Juda's land

The dreaded infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;

Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, [crew Can in his swaddling bands control the damnet

So when the sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon..

lov'd maze.

But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid her babe to rest:

Time is, our tedious song should here have

ending:

Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord, with hand-maid lamp, at.

tending:

And all about the courtly stable

Bright harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.

THE PASSION.

EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of heavenly Infant's birth,
My muse with angels did invite to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

In wintry solstice like the shorten'd light, Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living

night.

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,
Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than
Which he for us did freely undergo :

[89

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight Df labours huge and hard, too hard for human

wight !

He sovran priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshy tabernacle entered,
His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies:
O, what a mask was there, what a disguise!

Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,
Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren

side.

These latest scenes confine my roving verse,
To this horizon is my Phœbus bound.
His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings, other-where are found:
Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound ;
Me softer airs befit, and softer strings
Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.

Befriend me, night, best patroness of grief :
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flatter'd fancy to belief,
That heaven and earth are colour'd with my woe
My sorrows are too dark for day to know;

The leaves should all be black whereon I write And letters, where my tears have wash'd, a wannish

white.

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirl'd the prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirits some transporting cherub feels,
To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Ouce glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood,

i

1

There Loth my soul in holy vision sit,
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store,
And here though grief my feeble hands up-lock,
Yet on the soften'd quarry would I score
My plaining verse as lively as before;

For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in order'd characters

5

Or should I thence hurried on viewless wing
Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unbosoin all their echoes mild;

And I (for grief is easily beguil'd)

Might think the infection of my sorrows loud Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant

cloud..

[This subject the author finding to be above the years he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.]

UPON THE CIRCUMCISIO

A

YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright,..
That, erst with music, and triumphant song...
First heard by happy watchful shepher 's ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along,
Through the soft silence of the listening night场。
Now mourn: and if, sad share with us to bear,

Your fiery essence can distil no tear

Burn in your sighs, and borrow

Seas wept from our deep sorrow:

He, who with all heaven's heraldry whilere
Enter'd the world, now bleeds to give us ease,

Alas, how soon our sin

Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize!

T.