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But wisest Fate says No,

This must not yet be so,

The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy, That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss:

So both himself and us to glorify:

Yet first, to those ychained 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,

The old Dragon, under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway:

And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swinges 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,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting genius is with sighing sent;

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

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 power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-battered god of Palestine ; And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shrine;

The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

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 unshowered 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 timbrelled 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,

Nor 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,

Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved 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 fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord, with hand-maid lamp, attending :

And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harnessed 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 wint'ry solstice like the shortened light,
Soon swallowed 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 so,
Which he for us did freely undergo:

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight

Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

He, sovereign 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's side.

These latest scenes confine my roving verse;
To this horizon is my Phoebus bound:

His god-like 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 flattered fancy to belief,

That heaven and earth are coloured 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 washed, a wannish white.

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirled the prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirit some transporting cherub feels,
To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;
There doth 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 softened 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 ordered characters.

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 unbosom all their echoes mild;
And I (for grief is easily beguiled)

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

This subject the Author finding to e above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.

UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright,
That erst with music, and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful shepherd's ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along
Through the soft silence of the listening night;
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
Entered the world, now bleeds to give us ease.
Alas, how soon our sin

Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize !

O more exceeding love, or law more just?
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For we, by rightful doom remediless,
Were lost in death, till he, that dwelt above,
High-throned in secret bliss, for us frail dust
Emptied his glory, even to nakedness;

And that great covenant which we still transgress
Entirely satisfied;

And the full wrath beside

Of vengeful justice bore for our excess;

And seals obedience first, with wounding smart,

This day; but, O! ere long,

Huge pangs and strong

Will pierce more near his heart.

ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT,

DYING OF A COUGH.

O FAIREST flower, no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly,
Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winter's force that made thy blossom dry;
For he, being amorous on that lovely dye

That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss, But killed, alas! and then bewailed his fatal bliss.

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