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 aghast, With terror of that blast, Shall from the surface to the centre shake; When at the world’s last session, 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 usurpèd sway, And wroth to see his kingdom fail, Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs thro’ the archèd roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathèd spell Inspires the pale-ey’d 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 Edg’d with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flow’r-inwoven tresses torn The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
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 Power forgoes his wonted seat.
Peor and Baälim Forsake their temples dim, With that twice-batter’d god of Palestine; And moonèd Ashtaroth, Heaven’s queen and mother both, Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine; The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn. In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.
And sullen Moloch fled, 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: The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.
