A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;

From haunted spring, and dale

Edg'd with poplar pale,

The parting genius is with sighing sent;

With flow'r-inwoven tresses torn

185

The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

[plaint;

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

195

While each peculiar Pow'r foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

XXII.

Forsake their temples dim,

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heav'n's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz

mourn.

XXIII,

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

XXIV.

In Memphian grove or green,

205

210

[loud:

Trampling the unshow'r'd grass with lowings

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.

200 mooned] Milton added this word to our language. Todd.

215 Trampling] Benlowes's Theophila, p. 287.

،

Of wide hornd oxen trampling grass with lowings loud.'

XXV.

He feels from Juda's land.

The dreaded Infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;

Nor all the Gods beside,

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our babe, to show his Godhead true,

225

[crew.

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned

XXVI.

So when the sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to th' infernal jail,

230

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted Fayes

[maze.

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-lov'd

XXVII.

But see the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest,

[ing;

Time is our tedious song should here have end

Heav'n's youngest teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

£40

Her sleeping Lord with handimaid lamp attend

And all about the courtly stable

[ing;

Bright-harness'd Angels sit in order serviceable.

THE PASSION.

Ι.

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 divide to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,
In wintry solstice like the shorten'd light
Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living night.

5

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,
Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long, 10
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than
Which he for us did freely undergo :

[so,

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

III.

15

He sovereign priest stooping his regal head,
That dropp'd with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshly tabernacle entered,

His starry front low-roof'd beneath the skies :
O what a mask was there, what a disguise!

Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide, Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's

side.

IV.

These latest scenes confine my roving verse,
To this horizon is my Phœbus bound;
His god-like acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings other where are found; 25
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.

26 Cremona's trump] Vida's Christiad.