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[128] 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[129] seen
        In Memphian grove or green,
    Trampling the unshowered[130] grass with lowings loud;
        Nor can he be at rest
        Within his sacred chest;
    Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud;
      In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark,
  The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark: 

        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,
  Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

        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 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;
        Heaven’s youngest-teemed star[131]
        Hath fixed her polished car,
    Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
      And all about the courtly stable
  Bright-harnessed[132] angels sit, in order serviceable.[133]

If my reader should think some of the rhymes bad, and some of the words oddly used, I would remind him that both pronunciations and meanings have altered since:  the probability is, that the older forms in both are the better.  Milton will not use a wrong word or a bad rhyme.  With regard to the form of the poem, let him observe the variety of length of line in the stanza, and how skilfully the varied lines are associated—­two of six syllables and one of ten; then the same repeated; then one of eight and one of twelve—­no two, except of the shortest, coming together of the same length.  Its stanza is its own:  I do not know another poem written in the same; and its music is exquisite.  The probability is that, if the reader note any fact in the poem, however trifling it might seem to the careless eye, it will repay him by unfolding both individual and related beauty.  Then let him ponder the pictures given:  the sudden arraying of the shame-faced night in long beams; the amazed kings silent on their thrones; the birds brooding on the sea:  he will find many such.  Let him consider the clear-cut epithets, so full of meaning.  A true poet may