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The shepherds on the lawn,

Or e'er the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they then,

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below;

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,

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,

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering keep.

When such music sweet

Their hearts and cars did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook;

Divinely warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took;

The air, such pleasures loath to lose,

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;

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heaven- And Heaven, as at some festival,

ly close.

Nature that heard such sound,

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling,

Now was almost won

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;

She knew such harmony alone

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 ychained in sleep,

Could hold all Heaven and earth in happier union. The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light.

the deep!

With such a horrid clang

That with long beams the shamefaced night ar- As on Mount Sinai rang,

rayed;

The helmed cherubim,

And sworded seraphim,

While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:

The aged earth aghast,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings dis- With terror of that blast,

played;

Harping in loud and solemn choir,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake; When, at the world's last session,

With unexpressive notes to Heaven's new-born The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his Heir,

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And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail. keep.

Ring out, ye crystal spheres,

Once bless our human cars,

(If ye have power to touch our senses so;) And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time,

And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow;
And, with your ninefold harmony,
Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiv ing.

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

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Peor and Baalim

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 Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded

muz 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,

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 fayes,

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-love

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 fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attend.
ing;

And all about the courtly stable

Bright harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

THE PASSION.

EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of heavenly Infant's birth,
My muse with angels did divide to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing;

Thum-Soon swallowed up in dark and long outliving night.
In wintry solstice like the shortened light,

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my harp to notes of saddest wo,
Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than

So,

Which he for us did freely undergo:

Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

He, sovereign Priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshy tabernacle entered,

Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings His starry front low rooft beneath the skies:

loud:

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest;

Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrelled anthems dark

O what a mask was there, what a disguise:
Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,
Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's
side.

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. These latest scenes confine my roving verse;

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,

To this horizon is my Phœbus bound:
His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings other where are found;
Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound;
Me softer airs befit, and softer strings

Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.
Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief;

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew. Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,

"That twice-battered God of Palestine"-Dagon, first

martered by Samson, then by the ark of God.

• "Cremona's trump doth sound"—alluding to Christiad of Vida, a native of Cremona.

And work my flattered fancy to belief,
That Heaven and Earth are coloured with my wo: Then, all this earthly grossness quit,

When once our heavenly guided souls shall climb;

My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

The leaves should all be black whereon I write, And letters, where my tears have washed, a wannish white.

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirled the prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirit some transporting cherub feels,
To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store,
And here through grief my feeble hands up lock,
Yet on the softened quarry would I score
My plaining verse as lively as before;

For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in ordered characters.
Or should I thence, hurried on viewless wing,
Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild,
And I (for grief is easily beguiled)

Might think the infection of my sorrows loud Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud. This subject the Author finding to be above the years he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.

ON TIME.

FLY, envious Time, till thou run out thy race;
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;

So little is our loss,

So little is thy gain!

For when as each thing bad thou hast entombed,
And last of all thy greedy self consumed,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;

And joy shall overtake us as a flood,

When every thing that is sincerely good

And perfectly divine,

Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time.

UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright
That erst with music, and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful shepherds' ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along
Through the soft silence of the listening night;
Now mourn; and, if sad share with us to bear
Your fiery essence can distil no tear,
Burn in your sighs, and borrow
Seas wept from our deep sorrow:
He, who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere
Entered the world, now bleeds to give us ease
Alas, how soon our sin
Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize !

O more exceeding love, or law more just!
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For we, by rightful doom remediless,
Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above
High throned in secret bliss; for us frail dust
Emptied his glory, even to nakedness,
And that great covenant which we still transgress
Entirely satisfied;

And the full wrath beside

Of vengeful justice bore for out excess;

And seals obedience first, with wounding smart, This day; but O, ere long,

Huge pangs and strong

Will pierce more near his heart.

AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.

BLEST pair of Syrens, pledges of heavenly joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And to our high-raised fantasy presen
That undisturbed song of pure consent,
Aye sung before the sapphire coloured throne
To him that sits thereon,

With saintly shout, and solemn jubiiee;
Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,

With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow;

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As once we did, till disproportioned sin
Jarred against Nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made

To their great Lord, whose love their motions swayed

In perfect diapason, whilst they stood

In first obedience, and state of good.

O may we soon again renew that song,

And keep in tune with Heaven, till God ere long To his celestial concert us unite,

To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light!

AN EPITAPH

ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER.

THIS rich marble doth inter
The honoured wife of Winchester,
A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir,
Besides what her virtues fair
Added to her noble birth,
More than she could own from earth.
Summers three times eight save one
She had told; alas! too soon,
After so short time of breath,

To house with darkness, and with death.
Yet had the number of her days
Been as complete as was her praise,
Nature and Fate had had no strife,
In giving limit to her life.

Her high birth, and graces sweet,
Quickly found a lover meet;
The virgin choir for her request
The God that sits at marriage feast;
He at their invoking came,
But with a scarce well-lighted flame:
And in his garland, as he stood,
Ye migat discern a cypress bud.
Once had the early matrons run
To greet her of a lovely son,
And now with second hope she goes,
And calls Lucina to her throes;
But, whether by mischance or blare
Atropos for Lucina came;
And with remorseless cruelty
Spoiled at once both fruit and tree:
The hapless babe, before his birth,
Had burial, yet not laid in earth;
And the languished mother's womb
Was not long a living tomb.

So have I teen some tender slip,
Saved with care from winter's nip,
The pride of her carnation train,
Plucked up by some unheedy swain,
Who only thought to crop the flower
New shot up from vernal shower;
But the fair blossom hangs the head
Suleways as on a dying bed,

And those pearls of dew she wears,
Prove to be presaging tears,
Which the sad morn had let fall
On her hastening funeral.
Gentle lady, may thy grave
Peace and quiet ever have;
After this thy travail sore
Sweet rest seize thee ever more,
That, to give the world increase,
Shortened hast thy own life's lease
Here, besides the sorrowing
That thy noble house doth bring,
Here be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon;
And some flowers, and some bays,
For thy hearse, to strew the ways,
Sent thee from the banks of Came,
Devoted to thy virtuous name;

Whilst thou, bright Saint, high sit'st in glory
Next her, much like to thee in story,
That fair Syrian shepherdess,
Who, after years of barrenness,
The highly favoured Joseph bore
To him that served for her before,
And at her next birth, much like thee,
Through pangs fled to felicity,
Far within the bosom bright
Of blazing Majesty and Light;
There with thee, new welcome Saint,
Like fortunes may her sou! acquaint,
With thee there clad in radiant sheen;
No marchioness, but now a queen.

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