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 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.
And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain, with cymbal's 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,
Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings 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.
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.
He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded infant's hand--
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide--
Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine;
Our babe, to show His God-head true,
Can in His swaddling-bands control the damned crew.
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