From mortal adoration or regard, 665 Not then was Deity engulfed; nor Man, The rational creature, left, to feel the weight Of his own reason, without sense or thought Of higher reason and a purer will, To benefit and bless, through mightier power:-- 670 Whether the Persian--zealous to reject Altar and image, and the inclusive walls And roofs of temples built by human hands--[FB] To[360] loftiest heights ascending, from their tops, With myrtle-wreathed tiara on his brow,[361] 675 Presented sacrifice to moon and stars, And to the winds and mother elements, And the whole circle of the heavens, for him A sensitive existence, and a God,[FC] With lifted hands invoked, and songs of praise: 680 Or, less reluctantly to bonds of sense Yielding his soul, the Babylonian framed For influence undefined a personal shape; And, from the plain, with toil immense, upreared Tower eight times planted on the top of tower, 685 That Belus, nightly to his splendid couch Descending, there might rest;[FD] upon that height Pure and serene, diffused--to overlook[362] Winding Euphrates, and the city vast Of his devoted worshippers, far-stretched, 690 With grove and field and garden interspersed; Their town, and foodful region for support Against the pressure of beleaguering war. "Chaldean Shepherds, ranging trackless fields, Beneath the concave of unclouded skies 695 Spread like a sea, in boundless solitude, Looked on the polar star, as on a guide And guardian of their course, that never closed His stedfast eye. The planetary Five[FE] With a submissive reverence they beheld; 700 Watched, from the centre of their sleeping flocks, Those radiant Mercuries,[FF] that seemed to move Carrying through ether, in perpetual round, Decrees and resolutions of the Gods; And, by their aspects, signifying works 705 Of dim futurity, to Man revealed. --The imaginative faculty was lord Of observations natural; and, thus Led on, those shepherds made report of stars In set rotation passing to and fro, 710 Between the orbs of our apparent sphere And its invisible counterpart, adorned With answering constellations, under earth, Removed from all approach of living sight But present to the dead; who, so they deemed, 715 Like those celestial messengers beheld All accidents, and judges were of all.