The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems (7 page)

In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the flamens
¹⁵⁸
at their service quaint,
¹⁵⁹

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar
¹⁶⁰
power
¹⁶¹
forgoes his wonted seat.

XXII

Peor
¹⁶²
and Baalim
¹⁶³

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-battered god of Palestine

And moonèd Ashtaroth,
¹⁶⁴

Heav’n’s queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt
¹⁶⁵
with tapers’ holy shine.

The Libyc Hammon
¹⁶⁶
shrinks
¹⁶⁷
his horn.

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz
¹⁶⁸
mourn,

XXIII

And sullen Moloch,
¹⁶⁹
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
¹⁷⁰
blue.

The brutish
¹⁷¹
gods of Nile as fast,

Isis
¹⁷²
and Orus,
¹⁷³
and the dog Anubis,
¹⁷⁴
haste.

XXIV

Nor is Osiris
¹⁷⁵
seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling th’ unshowered grass with lowings loud,

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest:
¹⁷⁶

Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud.

In vain with timbreled
¹⁷⁷
anthems
¹⁷⁸
dark

The sable-stolèd
¹⁷⁹
sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.

XXV

He feels from Judah’s land

The dreaded infant’s hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn.
¹⁸⁰

Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon
¹⁸¹
huge, ending in snaky twine.
¹⁸²

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damnèd crew.

XXVI

So when the sun in bed,

Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient
¹⁸³
wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail.

Each fettered ghost slips to his several
¹⁸⁴
grave

And the yellow-skirted fays
¹⁸⁵

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
¹⁸⁶

XXVII

But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest.

Time is our tedious
¹⁸⁷
song should here have ending.

Heav’n’s youngest-teemèd
¹⁸⁸
star

Hath fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending,

And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harnessed
¹⁸⁹
angels sit in order serviceable.
¹⁹⁰

THE PASSION

1630: “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.”

I

Erewhile
¹⁹¹
of music and ethereal mirth,

Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,

And joyous news of Heav’nly infant’s birth,

My muse with Angels did divide to sing.
¹⁹²

But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

In wintry solstice like the shortened light

Soon swallowed up in dark and long outliving night.

II

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,

And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,

Which on our dearest Lord did seize
¹⁹³
ere long

Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so,

Which he for us did freely undergo,

Most perfect hero, tried in heaviest
¹⁹⁴
plight
¹⁹⁵

Of labors huge and hard, too hard for human wight.
¹⁹⁶

III

He sov’reign priest, stooping his regal head

That dropped with odorous oil down his fair eyes,

Poor fleshly tabernacle
¹⁹⁷
entered,

His starry front low-roofed beneath the skies.

Oh what a mask was there, what a disguise!

Yet more: the stroke of death he must abide,
¹⁹⁸

Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren’s side.

IV

These latter scenes confine my roving verse;

To this horizon is my Phoebus
¹⁹⁹
bound:

His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,

And former sufferings otherwhere are found.

Loud o’er the rest Cremona’s trump doth sound.
²⁰⁰

Me softer airs befit,
²⁰¹
and softer strings

Of lute, or viol still,
²⁰²
more apt for mournful things.

V

Befriend me, night, best patroness of grief,

Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,

And work my flattered fancy to belief

That Heav’n and earth are colored with my woe,

My sorrows are too dark for day to know.

The leaves should all be black wheron I write,

And letters, where my tears have washed, a wannish white.

VI

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels

That whirled the prophet
²⁰³
up, at Chebar flood!

My spirit some transporting Cherub feels,

To bear me where the towers of Salem
²⁰⁴
stood,

Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood.

There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive
²⁰⁵
trance,
²⁰⁶
and anguish, and ecstatic fit.
²⁰⁷

VII

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock

That was the casket of Heav’n’s richest store,
²⁰⁸

And here though grief my feeble hands uplock
²⁰⁹

Yet on the softened quarry
²¹⁰
would I score
²¹¹

My plaining
²¹²
verse, as lively
²¹³
as before,

For sure so well instructed are my tears

That they would fitly fall in ordered characters.
²¹⁴

VIII

Or should I, thence hurried on viewless wing,

Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,

The gentle neighborhood of grove and spring

Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild,

And I (for grief is easily beguiled)

Might think th’ infection
²¹⁵
of my sorrows loud

Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud.

SONG: ON MAY MORNING

1630–31

Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
²¹⁶

Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her

The flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.