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No war or battle's sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hooked chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovran lord was by.

But peaceful was the night,

Wherein the Prince of light

His reign of peace upon the earth began :

The winds, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kist,

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.

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.

F

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 foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice battered god of Palestine ;
And moonèd Astaroth,

Heaven's Queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with taper's holy shine;

The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Syrian 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.

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-stolèd sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

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 show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damnèd crew.

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 fays

Fly after the night steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending.

Heaven's youngest-teemèd 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.

JOHN DRYDEN.

Born 1631. Died 1700.

WHAT

PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

HAT weight of ancient witness can prevail,
If private reason hold the public scale?
But, gracious God, how well dost Thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.

O teach me to believe Thee thus concealed,
And search no farther than Thyself revealed;
But her alone for my director take,

Whom Thou hast promised never to forsake!
My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires;
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,

Followed false lights; and when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I, such by nature still I am;

Be Thine the glory and be mine the shame!

The Hind and the Panther.

ΟΝΕ

THE UNITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

NE in herself, not rent by schism, but sound,
Entire, one solid shining diamond,

Not sparkles shattered into sects like you:
One is the Church, and must be to be true,

One central principle of unity;
As undivided, so from errors free;

As one in faith, so one in sanctity.

Thus she, and none but she, the insulting rage
Of heretics opposed from age to age;

Still when the giant-brood invades her throne,

She stoops from heaven and meets them half way down, And with paternal thunder vindicates her crown.

But like Egyptian sorcerers you stand,

And vainly lift aloft your magic wand

To sweep away the swarms of vermin from the land.
You could like them, with like infernal force,
Produce the plague, but not arrest the course.
But when the boils and botches with disgrace
And public scandal sat upon the face,
Themselves attacked, the Magi strove no more,
They saw God's finger, and their fate deplore ;
Themselves they could not cure of the dishonest sore.
Thus one, thus pure, behold her largely spread,
Like the fair ocean from her mother-bed;
From east to west triumphantly she rides,

All shores are watered by her wealthy tides.
The gospel-sound, diffused from pole to pole,

Where winds can carry and where waves can roll,
The self-same doctrine of the sacred page,

Conveyed to every clime, in every age.

The Hind and the Panther.

LINES PRINTED UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF MILTON.

HREE poets, in three distant ages born,

THRE

Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.

The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty, in both the last.
The force of Nature could no farther go;
To make a third she joined the former two.

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