Yet first, to those ychain'd in sleep,

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the

deep;

With such a horrid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang

While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake;

The aged Earth aghast

With terror of that blast

Shall from the surface to the centre shake,

When, at the world's last session,

The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread His throne.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for from this happy day

The old Dragon, under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway;

And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving:
Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the sleep of Delphos leaving:

No nightly trance or breathéd spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore

A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale

Edged with poplar pale

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth

And on the holy hearth

The Lars and Lemurés 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 foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd god of Palestine;

And moonéd Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shrine;

The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz

mourn.

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.

Trampling the unshower'd 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 timbrell'd anthems dark

The sable-stoléd sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

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 show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damnéd crew.

So, when the sun in bed

Curtain'd with cloudy red

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter'd 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-teeméd star

Hath fixed her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable

Bright harness'd angels sit in order serviceable.

Milton.

LESSON XCV. THE BROOK.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty mills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges;
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling.

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel,

With many a silvery water-break
Above the golden gravel.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers,

I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses,
I linger by my shingly bars,
I loiter round my cresses.
And out again I come and flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.-Tennyson.

LESSON XCVI.-RAIN IN SUMMER.

How beautiful is the rain!

After the dust and heat,

In the broad and fiery street,

In the narrow lane,

How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs !

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window pane

It pours and pours;

And swift and wide,

With a muddy tide,

Like a river down the gutter roars

The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks

At the twisted brooks;

He can feel the cool

Breath of each little pool;

His fevered brain

Grows calm again,

And he breathes a blessing on the rain.