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. XVI. 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 ychained in sleep, The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep. XVII. 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. XVIII. 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. XIX. 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. XX. 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. XXI. 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. XXII. Peor and Baaelim 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 shine; The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn; In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn. XXIII. 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. XXIV.