Ring out, ye crystal spheres,

Once bless our humble ears,

(If ye have power to touch our senses so) And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time,

And let the bass of heav'n's deep organ blow, And with your ninefold harmony,

Make up full concert to th' angelic symphony.

For if such holy song

Inwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold, And speckled Vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous Sin will melt with earthly mould,

And Hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orb'd in a rainbow; and like glories wearing

Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering,

And Heav'n, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

But wisest Fate says no,

This must not yet be so,

The babe lies yet in smiling infancy,

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THE NATIVITY.

That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both himself and us to glorify :

Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep,

The wakeful trump of Doom must thunder through the deep

With such a horrid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang,

While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbreak ;

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 his throne.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for from this happy day,

Th' old Dragon underground

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 steep of Delphos leaving.

THE NATIVITY.

No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from his prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament,

From haunted spring and dale

Edg'd with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

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The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

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;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar pow'r foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine ;

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heav'n's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shrine;

The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammus mourn.

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THE NATIVITY.

And sullen Moloch fled,

Hath left in shadows dread,

His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshow'r'd grass with lowings loud;

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark,

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

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,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine;

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

So when the Sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

THE NATIVITY.

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to th' infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave,

And the yellow-skirted Fayes

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: Heav'n's youngest-teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending; And all about the courtly stable

Bright harnest angels sit in order serviceable.

John Milton.

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