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Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood
With scattered arms and ensigns; ti anon
His swift pursuers from heaven-gates discern
The advantage, and, descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen !"

[sprung

They heard, and were abashed, and up they
Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awal .
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel:
Yet to their general's voice they soon obeyed,
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,

Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That over the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,
Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till, at a signal given, the uplifted spear
Of their great sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain;
A multitude like which the populous north
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the south, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith from every squadron and each band
The heads and leaders thither haste where stood
Their great commander; godlike shapes and forms
Excelling human; princely dignities;

And powers that erst in heaven sat on throner

Though of eir names in heavenly records now
Be no memorial; blotted out and rased

By their rebellion from the books of life.

[man,

Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve [earth,
Got them new names; till, wandering over the
Through God's high sufferance for the trial of
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and the invisible
Glory of him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions, full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities:

Then were they known to men by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world.
Say, muse, their names then known, who first.
who last,

Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch, At their great emperor's call, as next in worth Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof. The chief were those, who, from the pit of hell, Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix Their seats long after next the seat of God, Their altars by his altar; gods adored Among the nations round, and durst abide Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned Between the cherubim; yea, often placed Within his sanctuary itself their shrines, Abominations; and with cursed things His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, And with their darkness durst affront his light. First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with bloo Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears; Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud Their children's cries unheard, that passed through To his grim idol. Him the Ammonité Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain. In Argob and in Basan to the stream

[fire

Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build

His temple right against the temple of God,
On that opprobrious hill; and made his grove
The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna called, the type of hell.
Next, Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons,
From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild
Of southmost Abarim; în Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond
The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines :
And Elëalé to the asphaltic pool.

Peor his other name, when he enticed
Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
To do him wanton rites, which cost them wee.
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove
Of Moloch homicide; lust hard by hate;
Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell. [flood
With these came they, who, from the bordering
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth; those male,
These feminine: for spirits, when they please.
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure;
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,

And works of love or enmity fulfil.
For those the race of Israel oft forsook

[choose

Their living Strength, and unfrequented lef
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial gods; for which their heads as low
Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear
Of despible foes. With these in troop

Came Astore, whom the Phoenicians called-
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood

Her temple on the offensive mountain, built
By that uxorious king, whose heart, though large
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell

To idols foul, Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day;
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat;
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah. Next came one
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopped
In his own temple, on the grunsel edge,
Lou
Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers:
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man
And downward fish: yet had his temple high
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,

And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.
Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the house of God was bold:
A leper once he lost, and gained a king;
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
God's altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared

A crew, who, under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,

With monstrous shapes and sorceries abuses
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek

[ed

Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms Rather than human. Nor did Israel 'scape The infection, when their borrowed gold compos The calf in Oreb; and the rebel-king Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, Likening his Maker to the grazed ox; Jehovah, who in one night, when he passed From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke Both her first-born and all her bleating gods. Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love Vice for itself: to him no temple stood, Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he In temples and at altars, when the priest Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled With lust and violence the house of God? In courts and palaces he also reigns, And in luxurious cities, where the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury and outrage: and wher night Darkens the streets, then wander 10rth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night In Gibeah, when the hospitable door Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape. These were the prime in order and in might; The rest were long to tell, though far renowned, The Ionian gods, of Javan's issue; held Gods, yet confessed later than heaven and earth, Their boasted parents: Titan, heaven's first-born With his enormous brood, and birthright seized By younger Saturn; he from mightier Jove, His own and Rhea's son, like measure found; So Jove usurping reigned: these first in Crete And Ida known, thence on the snowy top

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