For if such holy song Inwrap 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, 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. But wisest fate says No-- This must not yet be so; The babe yet lies in smiling infancy That on the bitter cross Must redeem our loss. So both Himself and us to glorify. Yet first to those ye chained 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 smould'ring clouds out-brake; 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 usurpèd 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 breathèd 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 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 lares 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-battered god of Palestine; And moonèd 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.