The oracles are dumb:[122] No voice or hideous hum Runs through the archéd 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[123] 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[124] moan with midnight plaint; In urns and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the flamens[125] 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 moonéd Ashtaroth, _the Assyrian Venus_. Heaven's queen and mother both, Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine; The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;[126] In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz[127] 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[128] 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[129] seen In Memphian grove or green, Trampling the unshowered[130] 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-stoléd sorcerers bear his worshipped ark: He feels, from Judah'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 damnéd 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.