XIX.

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 breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic

cell.

XX.

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.

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 power forgoes his wonted seat.

XXII.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice battered god of Palestine;
And mooned 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 Tham

muz mourn.

XXIII.

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.

XXIV.

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,

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark, The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.

XXV.

He feels, from Juda's land,

The dreaded Infant's hand,

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

Longer dare abide,

Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine.
Our Babe, to shew his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling-bands control the damned

crew.

XXVI.

So when the sun in bed,

Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fettered ghost slips to his several

grave,

And the yellow-skirted fayes

Fly after the Night steeds, leaving their moonloved maze.

XXVII.

But see! the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest,

Time is our tedious song should here have ending;

Heaven's youngest-teemed star

Hath fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid-lamp attending;

And all about the courtly stable Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

HENCE, loathed Melancholy!

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights

unholy.

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;