But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

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

Hath fixed her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending : And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.

LXIII

J. Milton

SONG FOR SAINT CECILIA'S DAY,

1687

FROM from beagan:

`ROM Harmony, from heavenly Harmony

When Nature underneath a heap

Of jarring atoms lay

And could not heave her head,

The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise, ye more than dead!

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry
In order to their stations leap,

And music's power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony

This universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound.

Less than a God they thought there could not dwell Within the hollow of that shell

That spoke so sweetly and so well.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

The trumpet's loud clangor

Excites us to arms,

With shrill notes of anger

And mortal alarms.

The double double double beat

Of the thundering drum
Cries, Hark! the foes come;
Charge, charge, 't is too late to retreat!'

The soft complaining flute

In dying notes discovers

The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs and desperation,

Fury, frantic indignation,

Depth of pains, and height of passion

For the fair disdainful dame.

But oh! what art can teach,
What human voice can reach

The sacred organ's praise?

Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race,
And trees uprooted left their place
Sequacious of the lyre:

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher:
When to her Organ vocal breath was given
An Angel heard, and straight appear'd-
Mistaking Earth for Heaven!

Grand Chorus

As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the blest above;

So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.

J. Dryden

LXIV

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEMONT

AVENGE, O Lord! thy slaughter'd Saints, whose

bones

Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones

Forget not: In thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant, that from these may grow A hundred-fold, who, having learnt Thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

J. Milton

LXV

HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN FROM IRELAND

THE

HE forward youth that would appear,
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing

His numbers languishing.

'Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unused armour's rust,
Removing from the wall

The corslet of the hall.

So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urgéd his active star:

And like the three-fork'd lightning first,
Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide :

For 't is all one to courage high

The emulous, or enemy;

And with such, to enclose

Is more than to oppose.

Then burning through the air he went And palaces and temples rent;

And Caesar's head at last

Did through his laurels blast.

'Tis madness to resist or blame
The face of angry heaven's flame;
And if we would speak true,
Much to the Man is due

Who, from his private gardens, where He lived reservéd and austere

(As if his highest plot

To plant the bergamot)

Could by industrious valour climb
To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the Kingdoms old
Into another mould.

Though Justice against Fate complain, And plead the ancient Rights in vain But those do hold or break

As men are strong or weak.

Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,

And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.

What field of all the civil war
Where his were not the deepest scar?

And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art,