Читать книгу The Golden Treasury - Unknown - Страница 66

     This is the month, and this the happy morn

     Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King

     Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,

     Our great redemption from above did bring;

     For so the holy sages once did sing

     That He our deadly forfeit should release,

     And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

     That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,

     And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty

     Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council-table

     To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

     He laid aside; and, here with us to be,

     Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

     And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

     Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

     Afford a present to the Infant God?

     Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain

     To welcome Him to this His new abode,

     Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,

     Hath took no print of the approaching light,

     And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

     See how from far, upon the eastern road,

     The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:

     O run, prevent them with thy humble ode

     And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;

     Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,

     And join thy voice unto the angel quire

     From out His secret altar touch'd with hallow'd fire.

     It was the Winter wild

     While the heaven-born Child

     All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies

     Nature in awe to Him

     Had doff'd her gaudy trim,

     With her great Master so to sympathise:

     It was no season then for her

     To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

     Only with speeches fair

     She woos the gentle air

     To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;

     And on her naked shame,

     Pollute with sinful blame,

     The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;

     Confounded, that her Maker's eyes

     Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

     But He, her fears to cease,

     Sent down the meek-eyed Peace,

     She crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding

     Down through the turning sphere

     His ready harbinger,

     With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;

     And waving wide her myrtle wand,

     She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

     No war, or battle's sound

     Was heard the world around:

     The idle spear and shield were high up hung;

     The hookéd Chariot stood

     Unstain'd with hostile blood;

     The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng;

     And kings sat still with awful eye,

     As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

     But peaceful was the night

     Wherin the Prince of Light

     His reign of peace upon the earth began:

     The winds, with wonder whist,

     Smoothly the waters kist

     Whispering new joys to the mild oceán—

     Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

     While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave.

     The stars with deep amaze

     Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze,

     Bending one way their precious influence;

     And will not take their flight

     For all the morning light,

     Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence;

     But in their glimmering orbs did glow,

     Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.

     And though the shady gloom

     Had given day her room,

     The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,

     And hid his head for shame,

     As his inferior flame

     The new-enlightn'd world no more should need:

     He saw a greater Sun appear

     Then his bright throne, or burning axletree, could bear.

     The shepherds on the lawn

     Or ere the point of dawn

     Sate 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

     Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

     When such music sweet

     Their hearts and ears did greet

     As never was by mortal finger strook—

     Divinely-warbled voice

     Answering the stringéd noise,

     As all their souls in blissful rapture took:

     The air, such pleasure loth to lose,

     With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly 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

     Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.

     At last surrounds their sight

     A globe of circular light

     That with long beams the shamefaced night array'd;

     The helméd Cherubim

     And sworded Seraphim,

     Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd,

     Harping in loud and solemn quire

     With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir.

     Such music (as 'tis said)

     Before was never made

     But when of old the sons of morning sung,

     While the Creator great

     His constellations set

     And the well-balanced world on hinges hung;

     And cast the dark foundations deep,

     And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

     Ring out, ye crystal spheres!

     Once bless our human ears,

     If ye have power to touch our senses so;

     And let your silver chime

     Move in melodious time;

     And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;

     And with your ninefold harmony

     Make up full concert to the angelic symphony.

     For if such holy Song

     Enwrap 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,

     Orb'd 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 ychain'd 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 smouldering clouds outbrake:

     The aged Earth agast

     With terrour of that blast

     Shall from the surface to the centre shake,

     When at the worlds last sessión,

     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 usurpéd sway;

     And, wroth to see his Kingdom fail,

     Swinges the scaly horrour of his folded tail.

     The oracles are dumb;

     No voice or hideous hum

     Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving:

     Apollo from his shrine

     Can no more divine,

     With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:

     No nightly trance or breathéd 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 Lars and Lemurés 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 Baalim

     Forsake their temples dim,

     With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine

     And moonéd 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 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,

     Trampling the unshower'd 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 timbrell'd anthems dark

     The sable stoléd sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

     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,

     Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

     Our Babe, to shew his Godhead true,

     Can in his swaddling bands control the damnéd crew.

     So, when the sun in bed

     Curtain'd with cloudy red

     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 fays

     Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

     But see, the Virgin blest

     Hath laid her Babe to rest;

     Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:

     Heavens youngest-teeméd star,

     Hath fixed her polish'd car,

     Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:

     And all about the courtly stable

     Bright-harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.