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. Peor and Baälim Forsake their temples dim, With that twice batter’d god of Palestine; And mooned Ashtaroth, Heaven’s queen and mother both, Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine; The Libyc 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 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 unshower’d 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 timbrell’d anthems dark The sable-stoled 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, Not 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, Curtain’d with cloudy red, Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, The flocking shadows pale Troop to th’ infernal jail; Each fetter’d 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 fix’d her polish’d car, Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending: And all about the courtly stable Bright-harness’d angels sit in order serviceable. JOHN MILTON 41. A HYMN OF THE NATIVITY _Chorus._ Come we shepherds whose blest sight Hath met Love’s noon in Nature’s night, Come, lift we up our loftier song, And wake the sun that lies too long. To all our world of well-stol’n joy, He slept and dreamt of no such thing, While we found out heaven’s fairer eye And kist the cradle of our King; Tell him he rises now too late, To show us aught worth looking at. Tell him we now can show him more Than e’er he showed to mortal sight, Than he himself e’er saw before, Which to be seen needs not his light. Tell him, Tityrus, where th’ hast been, Tell him, Thyrsis, what th’ hast seen.