The Golden Treasury. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

       She knew such harmony alone

       Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.

       At last surrounds their sight

       A globe of circular light

       That with long beams the shamefaced night array'd;

       The helméd Cherubim

       And sworded Seraphim,

       Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd,

       Harping in loud and solemn quire

       With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir.

       Such music (as 'tis said)

       Before was never made

       But when of old the sons of morning sung,

       While the Creator great

       His constellations set

       And the well-balanced world on hinges hung;

       And cast the dark foundations deep,

       And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

       Ring out, ye crystal spheres!

       Once bless our human ears,

       If ye have power to touch our senses so;

       And let your silver chime

       Move in melodious time;

       And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;

       And with your ninefold harmony

       Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.

       For if such holy Song

       Enwrap our fancy long,

       Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold;

       And speckled vanity

       Will sicken soon and die,

       And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;

       And Hell itself will pass away,

       And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

       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;

       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

       The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep;

       With such a horrid clang

       As on mount Sinai rang

       While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:

       The aged Earth agast

       With terrour of that blast

       Shall from the surface to the centre shake,

       When at the worlds last sessión,

       The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread His throne.

       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 usurpéd sway;

       And, wroth to see his Kingdom fail,

       Swinges the scaly horrour of his folded tail.

       The oracles are dumb;

       No voice or hideous hum

       Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving:

       Apollo from his shrine

       Can no more divine,

       With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:

       No nightly trance or breathéd spell

       Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

       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

       The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

       In consecrated earth

       And on the holy hearth,

       The Lars and Lemurés 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 forgoes his wonted seat.

       Peor and Baalim

       Forsake their temples dim,

       With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine

       And moonéd Ashtaroth

       Heaven's queen and mother both,

       Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

       The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

       СКАЧАТЬ