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,

have power to touch our senses so;

And let

your silver chime

Move in melodious time;

And let the base of heaven's deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony

Make up full concert to th' angelic symphony.

For if such holy song

Inwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back, and fetch the age

And speckled vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

of gold;

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,

Orbed 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 lies yet in smiling infancy,

That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both Himself and us to glorify:

Yet first to those 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 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 usurped 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 breathed 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 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 Baalim

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 shrine,
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Tammuz

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 grizly 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 Judah's land

The dreaded Infant's hand,

The of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne;

rays

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 damned crew.

So when the sun in bed,

Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave;

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to th' 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-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.

ON THE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.

AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones.
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not in thy book record their groans,

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven.

Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all th' Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant: that from these may grow

A hundred-fold, who having learned thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian wo.

ON HIS BLINDNESS.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He, returning, chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best; his state Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait."