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 usurpèd 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 breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the pro

phetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud la

ment;

From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-in woven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures mourn with mid

night 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, While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim

With that twice-battered God of Pales

tine;

And moonèd Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Libyac Hammon shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded
Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue: In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue:

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 unshowered grass with lowings loud;

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbreled anthems dark

The sable-stolèd sorcerers bear his worshiped ark.

He feels from Judah's land

The dreaded infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky

eyne;