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XXIV.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud :
Nor can he be at rest
Within his facred chest,

Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;
In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark
The fable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

XXV.
He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the Gods beside
Longer dare abide,

225
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine :
Our babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swadling-bands controll the damned crew,

XXVI. So when the sun in bed, Curtain’d with cloudy red,

230 Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, The flocking shadows pale Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave, And the yellow-skirted Fayes

235 Fly after the night-Iteeds, leaving their moon-lov'd

XXVII.
But see the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest,

Time is our tedious fong should here have ending: Heaven's youngest teemed star

240 Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending: And all about the courtly stable Bright-harnest Angels fit in order ferviceable.

I.
EWHILE of mulic, and ethereal mirth,

Wherewith the stage of air and carth did ring,
And joyous news of heav'nly Infant's birth,
My Muse with Angels did divide to fing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

5 In wintry folftice like the Morten'd light Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living night.

II. For now to sorrow must I tune my song, And set my harp to notes of faddest woe, 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, try'd in heaviest plight Of labors huge and hard, too hard for human wight!

III. He

10

III.
He sovran Priest stooping his regal head,

15
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshly tabernacle entered,
His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies;
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.

20

IV.

30

These latest scenes confine my roving verse,
To this horizon is my Phobus bound;
His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings other-where are found; 25
Loud c'er the rest Cremona's trump doth found;

Me softer airs befit, and softer strings
Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.

V.
Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief,
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flatter'd fancy to belief,
That Heav'n and Earth are color'd with my woe;
My sorrows are too dark for day to know :

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

35
VI.
See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirl'd the Prophet up at Chebar flood,
My spirit some transporting Cherub feels,

To

1

To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious tow’rs, now sunk in guiltless blood ; 40

There doth my soul in holy vision sit
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.

VII.
Mine

eye

hath found that sad fepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heav'n's richest store,
And here though grief my feeble hands up-lock, 45
Yet on the soften’d 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 order'd characters.

VIII.
Or should I thence hurried on viewless wing, 50
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 beguild)

Might think th' infection of my sorrows loud 55 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 unfinish'd.

F,

10

TLY 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,

5 And merely mortal dross; So little is our loss, So little is thy gain. For when as each thing bad thou hast intomb’d, And last of all thy greedy self consum’d, Then long Eternity fall 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,

15 With truth, and peace, and love, fall ever shine About the supreme throne Of him, t' whose happy-making fight alone When once our heav’nly-guided foul shall climb, Then all this earthy grossness quit, “Attir'd with stars, we shall for ever sit, Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O

Time,

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VI. UPON