Page:Milton - Milton's Paradise Lost, tra il 1882 e il 1891.djvu/27

388–421.] Within His sanctuary itself their shrines, Abominations, and with cursed things His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, And with their darkness durst affront His light. First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears; Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God, On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. Next, Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons, From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon, And Horonáim, Seon's realm, beyond The flowery dale of Sibma, clad with vines, And Eleälé to the asphaltic pool. Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove Of Moloch homicide; lust hard by hate; Till good Josiah drove them hence to Hell. With these came they, who, from the bordering flood Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names