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From haunted spring and dale,

Edg'd with poplar pale,

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The parting Genius is with sighing sent;

With flower-inwoven tresses torn

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

XXI.

In consecrated earth,

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 Pow'r forgoes his wonted seat.

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Now its not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Libye Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

XXIII.

His burning idol all of blackest hue;

In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

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199. "That twice-battered God of Palestine ;"....Dagon, rst battered by Samson then by the ark of God.

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In dismal dance about the furnace blue:

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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,

Trampling the unshow'r'd grass with lowings loud:

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest ;

Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark.

He feels from Juda's land

The dreaded Infant's hand,

XXV.

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the Gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Tpyhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the dafined crew.

So, when the sun in bed,

Curtain'd with cloudy red,

XXVI.

Pillows his chiu upon au orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to th' infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted fayes.

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

XXVII.

But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is our tedious song should here have ending;

Heav'n'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.

IV.

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THE PASSION.

I.

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.

11.

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 perfet Hero, try'd in heaviest plight

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

10

III.

He, sov'reign Priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropt with odoroas oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshy tabernacle entered,

His starry front low-rooft 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;

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

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

V.

Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief;
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,

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And work my flatter'd fancy to belief,

That Heav'n and Earth are colour'd with my woe;

My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

The leaves should all be black whereon I write,

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;

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My spirit some transporting cherub feels,

26" Cremona's trump doth sound;.... alluding to the Christiad of Vida, a native of Cremona.

1

!

To bear me where the tow'rs of Salem stood,
Once glorious tow'rs, now sunk in guiltless blood
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.
VII.

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Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heav'n's richest store,
And here though grief my feeble hands up lock,
Yet on the soften'd quarry would I score

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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.

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 beguil'd)

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

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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.

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