To cherish grief, her last, her dearest care,
Her one fond hope-to perish of despair.
Oft as the shifting light her sense beguiled,
Blushing she shrunk, and thought the marble
smiled:
Oft breathless listening heard, or seem'd to hear,
A voice of music melt upon her ear.
Slowly she waned, and, cold and senseless grown, Closed her dim eyes, herself benumb'd to stone. Yet love in death a sickly strength supplied, Once more she gazed, then feebly smiled and died.
'Twas now the hallow'd eve; her feast ordain'd, The lunar deity, heaven's empress, hight Astarte, or horn'd Ashtaroth, far famed
Of heathen worshippers. There Moloch's priests
Led Israel's chief. Mid oaks of antique growth,
In the close circuit of a myrtle grove,
That o'er the lawn a lighter shade diffused,
Her temple rose. It crown'd the smooth ascent
Of a green hill, and cast, at hour of eve,
Its shadow o'er the sleepy water wide
Of a clear lake; the consecrated haunt
Of fowls and finny multitudes. Beneath
The myrtle grove, bowers of inwoven shade
Bloom'd odoriferous foliage. There the rose,
The jasmine, and the lily flourish'd fair:
And vines and wanton eglantines entwined
Their wedded tendrils. Nor the perfumed breath
Of orange bloom, or Gilead's fragrance failed:
Nor aught in leaf or painted flower, whose hues
Embroider earth. At every arbour served
Boys and fair girls, that round an altar heaped,
Not without hymn of youth and joy and love,
The treasures of the orient, spice and gum,
And nard delicious: so that every gale
Fann'd odours, and the genial air around
Seem'd burden'd with voluptuous languor sweet.
The birds there sweetly sang; and murmuring
doves,
That round the sculptured frieze their cradles hung,
Cooed on the temple's golden brow. Before
Its porch a curtain fell, embroider'd web
Of Tyre. In midst a mystic orb inwrought,
Half sun, half moon. Its broad circumference hung
Poised, where a wavy shadow ran athwart,
Severing the veil in twain. The upper limb,
And all above, as by its light illumed,
Blazed in the radiance bright of burnish'd gold.
All forms of life there gather'd, and each form
Glow'd, full of life. The eagle soar'd aloft
On balanced wing: the steed, in stretch of race:
The kid danced wanton on fresh-springing flowers:
The green tree budded, and the bright rill flowed.
Midst these, in bloom of beauty, from the shades
Thammuz ascendant. In his hand a spear,
Poised, ere yet lanced. O'er him, in air suspense,
A goddess hung, and in his lips imbreathed
The spirit of life and love. Above, appear'd
Gods, gay at feast. The lower limb, and all
Beneath its influence, seem'd with night o'ercast:
If night that may be named, wherein each form
In silver wrought shone plainly vision'd forth;
But pale in the comparison of gold.
All shone: but it was the shining of the moon, Faint image of the sun. Each figure bore Similitude of languor and decay.
There humankind sunk down in senseless swoon, Half life, half death. On the herbless plain the steed
Lay panting. There the kid, in act to fall,
Hung o'er the sere flower, withering 'neath his foot.
The eagle closed his eye, and folded in
Each feather smooth: lower'd his crest, and gleams
Soft flow'd along his glossy back, upraised
In heave of slumber. There the leafless tree
Droop'd; and what water seem'd stood icy still.
In midst of these, Sidonian skill had wrought
The form of Thammuz, bending o'er his wound,
Whence the large life-drops struggled. At his feet
A bow was broken, and its shaft in twain.
Near him a boar his blood-strain'd trunk upraised.
There bent the form of Thammuz: but, below,
His spirit, like a shadow, gliding on
In guidance of a minister of death,
With ringlets shorn, and torch extinct, sank down
To Hades and the unembodied shades.
Such was the mystic veil that hid from view Astarte and her rites. Without, in choirs, Fair youths, of either sex, in light robes loose, Cerulean dye, with golden stars bedropp'd, Their brows with myrtle garlanded, came on In dance to dulcet flutes: or, where the bowers Woo'd them, withdrew. Some on the mystic web Intently gazed: ere clang of cymbals spake Heaven's empress radiant on her zenith throne. What time the veil uplifted shouts expose
In full illumination, amid blaze
Of lamps and flame of torches, sparkling wide,
And fires, like suns, irradiate round her shrine,
Making the midnight brighter than noonday,
The secret mysteries of Astarte's rites
In act of celebration. On through these,
Perforce, the Hebrew pass'd. Oft to his gaze
Idolatrous Gath, in mockery of God,
Had lifted up her deities; horned front
Of bull or ram, beak'd bird, and scaly coat:
And many a monstrous image, mixture vile
Of uncongenial natures: Dagon foul,
Derceto, and Atargatis: and some
Of loathsome birth, that to their shapes abhorr'd
Challenged the glory of the eternal God,
The' Invisible: the kind that crept, or crawled,
And the wing'd generation of the sun,
Breathed up in pestilence from marsh and fen:
And the webbed foot that haunts both land and
Terror alike of both. To each its shrine
And worshipper, to creatures of all kinds
Rites, prayer, and praise. To thee, Creator! none.
But in this grove no idol met his gaze:
Sight fouler far, the living image of God
In man abused.
DESCRIPTION OF A SCULPTURE ON
THE TEMPLE OF MARS..
UPON the eastern pediment stood out
A fierce relief, where the tumultuous stone
Was nobly touched into a fit device
For the' immortal homicide within: it show'd
His coming on the earth; the God had burst
The gates of Janus, that fell shattering back
Behind him, from the wall the rearing steeds
Sprung forth, and with their stony hoofs the air
Insulted. Them Bellona urged, abroad
Her snaky locks from her bare wrinkled brow
Went scattering; forward the' haggard charioteer
Lean'd, following to the coursers' reeking flanks
The furrowing scourge with all herself, and hung
Over their backs, half fury and half joy,
As though to listen to their bruising hoofs
That trampled the thick massacre. Erect
Behind, with shield drawn in and forward spear,
The coned helm finely shaped to the' arching brow,
The god stood up within the car, that seem'd
To rush whenever the fleet wind swept by.
His brow was glory, and his arm was power,
And a smooth immortality of youth,
Like freshness from Elysium newly left,
The' embalming of celestial airs inhaled,
Touch'd with a beauty to be shudder'd at
His massy shape, a lightninglike fierce grace,
That makes itself admired while it destroys.
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