When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal fingers strook, Divinely warbled voice

Answering the stringèd noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took: The air, such pleasure loath to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

Nature, that heard such sound,

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling,

Now was almost won,

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last ful

filling;

She knew such harmony alone

Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light,

That with long beams the shame-faced

night arrayed;

The helmed cherubim,

And sworded seraphim,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,

Harping in loud and solemn quire,

With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's newborn heir.

Such music as 't is said
Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of morning sung, While the Creator great

His constellations set,

And the well-balanced world on hinges

hung,

And cast the dark foundations deep,

And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out, ye crystal spheres,

Once bless our human ears,

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,

Orbed 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: Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

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 center 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, Swings 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 breathèd spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.