For if such holy song Inwrap our fancy long, 14. Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold, And speckled Vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould, And Hell itself will pass away, And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. 15. Yea Truth and Justice then Will down return to men, Orb'd in a rainbow; and like glories wearing Mercy, will sit between, Thron'd 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, 16. The babe lies yet in smiling infancy, That on the bitter cross Must redeem our loss; So both himself and us to glorify: VOL. II. 20 Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep, The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake: The aged earth aghast, With terrour 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 But now begins; for from this happy day Th' 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 horrour of his folded tail. The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum 19. Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell Inspires the pale-ey'd priest from the prophetic cell. 20. 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 flow'r-inwoven tresses torn The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. 21. 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 forgoes his wonted seat. Peor and Baälim 22. 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 shine; The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn, In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn. 23. 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 24. In Memphian grove or green, Trampling the unshowr'd grass with lowings loud: Nor can he be at rest Within his sacred chest, Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark The fable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark. He feels from Juda's land 25. The dreaded infant's hand, The 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 swadling bands control the damned crew. 26. So when the sun in bed, Curtain'd with cloudy red, Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, The flocking shadows pale Troop to th' infernal jail, Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave, Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-lov'd |