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

Move in melodious time;

And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow; And, with your ninefold harmony,

Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.

For, if such holy song

Enwrap 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 from 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 heaven, 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 yet lies in smiling infancy,

That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both himself and us to glorify:

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 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 tressés torn,

The nymphs in twilight shades 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,

[seat.

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted

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 Lybic 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,

[loud:

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings Nor can he be at rest

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

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd 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,

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-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 fix'd her polish'd car,

[ing:

Her sleeping Lord, with handmaid lamp, attend

And all about the courtly stable

Bright harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.

.II.

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 divide 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 outliving 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!