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 ye chained 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 smould'ring clouds out-brake;
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 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 breathèd 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 lares 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-battered 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 cymbal's 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.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud,
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest—
Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud;
In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark.
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.
He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded infant's hand—
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide—
Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine;
Our babe, to show His God-head true,
Can in His swaddling-bands control the damnèd crew.