XV.

Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orb'd 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;

XVI.

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 ychain'd in sleep,

145

150

155

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep;

With such a horrid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang,

XVII.

While the red fire and smouldering clouds out brake:

The aged earth aghast,

With terrour of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake;

When, at the world's last sessiòn,

160

The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

XVIII.

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,

Swindges the scaly horrour of his folded tail.

165

170

is a fine picture by Guido, representing Michael the arch-angel treading on Satan, who has such a tail as is here describedJos WARTON. The word swindge is now spelt without the d.

173. The oracles, &c. Attention is irresistibly awakened and engaged, by the air of solemnity and enthusiasm that reigns in this stanza and some that follow. Such is the power of true poetry, that one is almost inclined to believe the evperstitions real.-Jos. WARTON.

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 prophetick cell.

XX.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent:

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

175

180

185

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,

XXI.

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight 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

XXII.

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine;

-And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy(shine:

The Libyck Hammon shrinks his horn;

*190

195

200

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn:

And sullen Moloch, fled,

XXIII.

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:

183. A voice of weeping, &c. Matt. ii. 18. 191. The Lars (or rather Lares) and Lemures were heathen household gods. 197. Pear. See Paradise Lost, i. 412. 199. Twice-batter'd god, Dagon. See 1 Sam. v. 3, 4.

200. Mooned, taken for the moon. "Mil

205

210

ton added this word to our language." TODD.

201. Heaven's queen and mother. She was called regina cæli and mater Deûm. 202. Shine is used by many of the old writers as a noun.

205. Moloch. See Par. Lost, i. 392. Mil

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste:

XXIV.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud: 215 Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest;

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud: In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

220

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,

Can in his swaddling bands controul the damned crew.

So, when the sun in bed,

XXVI.

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail;

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted Fayes

225

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

But see, the Virgin blest

XXVII.

Hath laid her Babe to rest:

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven's youngest-teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harness'd Angels sit in order serviceable.

ton, like a true poet, in describing the Syrian superstitions, selects such as were most susceptible of poetical enlargement; and which, from the wildness of their ceremonies, were most interesting to the fancy.-T. WARTON.-216. Unshower'd, there being no rain in Egypt.

230

235

240

235 Fayes. It is a very poetical mode of expressing the departure of the fairies at the approach of morning, to say that they fly after the steeds of Night.-T. WARTON.-242. Handmaid lamp; alluding, perhaps, to the parable of the Ten Virgins in the Gospel.

THE PASSION.*

I.

EREWHILE of musick, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of heavenly 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.

II.

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,

Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so,
Which he for us did freely undergo:

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight

Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

III.

He, sovran Priest, stooping his regal head,

That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshly tabernacle entered,

His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies:

O, what a mask was there, what a disguise!

10

15

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 Phoebus bound:

20

His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings, other where are found;
Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound:

25

* I cannot agree with Sir Egerton Brydges that this Ode or Elegy is "unaccount. ably inferior" to the preceding Hymn. True, this is not so highly finished as the other, but there are in it exquisite touches of beauty. A beloved friend and accomplished scholar of Oxford (J. W.) writes me-"That third stanza has often suffused my eyes and quickened my heart's pulsation: what a saddening, melancholy tenderness-a climax of pathos and of dear human sympathy in the last two lines!"

1. Erewhile, &c. Hence we may conjecture that this Ode was probably composed soon after that on the "Nativity." And this, perhaps, was a college exercise at Easter, as the last was at Christmas.T. WARTON.

13. Most perfect Hero. See IIeb. ii. 10. 26. Cremona's trump. Vida's "Christiad," which our author seems to think the finest Latin poem on a religious subject, is here called Cremona's trump, be cause Vida was born at Cremona.

Me softer airs befit, and softer strings

Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.

Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief;
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flatter'd fancy to belief,

30

That heaven and earth are colour'd with my woe;

The leaves should all be black whereon I write ;

My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

34

And letters, where my tears have wash'd a wannish white.

VI.

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirl'd the Prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirit some transporting Cherub feels,
To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood:
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatick fit.

VII.

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store;
And here, though grief my feeble hands up lock,
Yet on the soften'd quarry would I score
My plaining verse as lively as before;

For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in order'd characters.

VIII.

40

45

Or should I thence, hurried on viewless wing,
Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild;
And I (for grief is easily beguiled)

50

Might think the infection of my sorrows loud
Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud.

55

This subject the author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.

28. Of lute, or viol: That is, gentle; not noisy or loud like the trumpet.

34. The leaves, &c. Conceits were not confined to words only. Mr. Stevens has a volume of Elegies, in which the paper is black and the letters white: that is, in all the title-pages. Every intermediate leaf is also black. What a sudden change, from this childish idea to the noble apostrophe, the sublime rapture and imagination of the next stanza.-T. WARTON.

43. That sad sepulchral rock: That is, the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

51. Take up a weeping. Jer. ix. 10. 52. The gentle neighbourhood. A sweetly beautiful couplet, which, with the two preceding lines, opened the stanza so well, that I particularly grieve to find it terminate feebly in a most miserably dis gusting concetto.--DUNSTER.