"The advantage, and, descending, tread us down "Thus drooping, or with linkèd thunderbolts "Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
"Awake! arise! or be for ever fallen?"
They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung Upon the wing; as when men, wont to watch, On duty sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. 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 o'er the realm of impious Pharoah 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, as 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 Lybian 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 thrones;
Though of their names in heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and razed
By their rebellion from the books of Life. Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names; till, wandering o'er the earth Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man,
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 blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears;
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob, and in Basan, to the stream 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 Aroër to Nebo, and the wild
Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Horonáïm, Seon's realm, beyond
The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleäle, 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 by the grove Of Moloch homicide,—lust hard by hate;— Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell. With these came they, who, from the bordering flood 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 choose, Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their airy purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.
For those the race of Israel oft forsook
Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down To bestial gods; for which their heads as low Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear Of despicable foes.
With these in troop Came Astoreth, 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
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.
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopped off In his own temple, on the grunsel edge, 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 Abana and Pharpar, 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.
A crew, who, under names of old renown,
OSIRIS, ISIS, ORUS, and their train,
With monstrous shapes, and sorceries, abused Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
The infection, when their borrowed gold composed 'The calf in Oreb; and the rebel king
Doubled that sin, in Bethel and in Dan, Likening his Maker to the grazèd 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 490 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 when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth 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, 510 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 Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air, Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds Of Doric land; or who with Saturn old Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost Isles.
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