XXI.

      In consecrated earth,
      And on the holy hearth,
  The Lars 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.

XXII.

      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.

XXIII.

      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.

XXIV.

      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,
  Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud;
    In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark,
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped 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,
  Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine. 
    Our Babe, to shew his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling-bands control the damned crew.

XXVI.

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

XXVII.

      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
      Hath fixed her polished car,
  Her sleeping Lord with handmaid-lamp attending;
    And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

50. L’Allegro.