Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/52

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��POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL AND AT COLLEGE

��XXI

In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, 190

The Lars and Lemures moan with mid- night plaint;

I n 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 Baalim Forsake their temples dim, With that twice-battered god of Pales- tine;

And mooned Ashtaroth, 200

Heaven's Queen and Mother both, Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine : The Libyc 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, 211

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 timbreled anthems dark, The sable-stoled Sorcerers bear his wor- shiped ark. 220

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,

��Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

XXVI

So, when the Sun in bed, Curtained with cloudy red, 230

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 240 Hath fixed her polished car, Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp

attending;

And all about the courtly stable Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order ser- viceable.

��A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV

(1624)

To this translation there is prefixed in the original editions the words : " This and the following Psalm were done by the Author at fifteen years old." They are the earliest of Milton's compositions of which we have record, and the only ones dating from the period of his school-life at St. Paul's. Whether they were self-elected tasks or appointed exercises is unknown. The diction employed in them shows strongly the influence of the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, made popu- lar in England early in the seventeenth century through Sylvester's translation.

WHEN the blest seed of Terah's faithful Son

After long toil their liberty had won,

And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan- land,

Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand,

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