Or in this abject posture have ye stvorni
To adore the Conqueror ? who now beholds
Cherub and scraph rolling in the flood
With scattered arms and ensigns ; til 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 a.
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 multitudē 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 i
Though of weir names in heavenly records now Be no memorial ; blotted out and rased By their rebellion from the books of life. 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 (man, 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 firsto
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 blood 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 [fine Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain. In Argob and in Basan: t she stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neig!ı bourhood, 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; in 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 woe.
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged
Even to that hill of scandal, hy the grove
Of Moloch homicide ; lust hard by hate;
Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell. (food
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, (choose
Can execute their aery purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.
For those the race of Israel oft forsook
Their living Strength, and unfrequented lef
Ris righteous altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial gods ; for which their heads as low
Howed down in battle, sunk before the spear
Of despuble fres. With these in troop
Came Astortill, whom the Phænicians 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 grụnsel 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 Azutus, dreaded through the coast Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds. Hiin followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat, l'as 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, bis sottish conqueror, whom he drev 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 abusea
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
Rather than buman. Nor did Israel 'scape
The infection, when their borrowed gold compos
The calf in Oreb; and the rebel.king (ed
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 coniewd
Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself: to bim no temple stood,
Or altar smoked ; yet who more oft than hie
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 worth the song
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-borrie
With his enormous brood, and birthright seized
By younger Saturn; be from mightier Jove,
His own and Rhea's son, like measure found :
So Jove usurping reigned: these first in Creto
Aud Ida kuown, thence on the snowy top
|