When such music sweet,
Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air such pleasure loth to lose
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heav’uly

close.

Nature that heard such sound,
Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the aery region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all heav'n and earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,

That with long beams the shame-fac'd night array’d,
The helmed cherubim
And sworded seraphim

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn quire With unexpressive notes to heav'n's new-born Heir.

Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,

And the well-balanc'd world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the well’ring waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring ont, 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 пр

full concert to th' angelic symphony.

For if such holy song
lawrap 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,
Thron'din 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,
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 outbrake,
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 bis

throne.

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,

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 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.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale eyed priest from the 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,
The nyinphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets

mourn.

In consecrated earth
Aud 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 scat.

Peor and Baälin
Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice batter'd god of Palestine ;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heav'n's queen and inother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks bis horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammus

mouin

And sollen 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 bile;
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,

Nought but profonndest Hell can he 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 ey;
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine :
Our Babe to shew 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 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 štar
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.