Such music (as ’tis said) Before was never made, But when of old the sons of morning sung, While the Creator great His constellations set, 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, (If ye 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 consort to th’ angelic symphony. For if such holy song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold; And speckled Vanity Will sicken soon and die, 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, Orb’d in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between, Thron’d 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 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 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, Edg’d with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.