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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,

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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,

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With such a horrid clang

As on mount Sinai rang,

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,

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[the deep,

The wakeful trump of Doom nust thunder through

[brake:

While the red fire and smouldering clouds out

The aged Earth aghast,

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With terror of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake; When at the world's last session,

[throne.

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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,

176

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

173. In allusion to the opinion that the oracles ceased
at our Saviour's birth.

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

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[mourn.

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

190

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,

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While each peculiar pow'r foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd God of Palestine;

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heav'n's queen and mother both,

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Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

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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:

191. The Lars and Lemures; household gods and night spirits. Flamens; priests. There is a remark ble resemblance in this poem, one of Milton's earliest, to the later productions of his genius. It presents the same mixture of learning and fancy; of original genius, forgetting itseif amid the treasures of erudition. Most of the mythological names have been mentioned in the notes to the larger poems.

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

216

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

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The dreaded Infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside,

Longer dare abide,

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Nor 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,

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Pillows his ohin 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

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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: Heav'n's youngest teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

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Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending :

And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harnest angels sit in order serviceable.

IV.

THE PASSION.

EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of heav nly Infant's birth,
My Muse with angels did invite to sing;
But headlong Joy is ever on the wing,

5

244. Bright-harnest; arnese, from which the epithet is derived, is an Italian word for any kind of ornament or dress. Harness, in English, is commonly used for armour. See 1 Kings xx. 11.

In wintry solstice like the shorten'd light

Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living night.

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,

10

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

15

He sov'reign Priest stooping his regal head, That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes, Poor fleshly 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,

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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 godlike 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 flatter'd fancy to belief,

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That Heav'n and Earth are colour'd 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 wash'd a wannish

white.

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirl'd the Prophet up at Chebar flood,

My spirit some transporting cherub feels,
To bear me where the tow'rs of Salem stood,
Once glorious tow'rs, now sunk in guiltless blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.

35

41

26. Cremona was the birth-place of the poet Vida, who wrote a poem on the sufferings and history of Christ.

37. The prophet; Ezekiel. See Ezekiel, chap. i.

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heav'n's richest store,
And here though grief my feeble hands up lock, 45
Yet on the soften'd 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 order'd 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)

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

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

V.

ON TIME.

FLY, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;

So little is our loss,

So little is thy gain.

For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,

And last of all thy greedy self consumed,

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Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss

With an individual kiss;

And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,

When every thing that is sincerely good

And perfectly divine,

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With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine

About the supreme throne

Of Him, to' whose happy-making sight alone

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