Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome him to this his new abode,

Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,

And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

See how from far, upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,

And join thy voice unto the angel quire

From out his secret altar touch'd with hallow'd fire.

THE HYMN

It was the winter wild

While the heaven-born Child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;

Nature in awe to him

Had doff'd her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize:

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

Only with speeches fair

She woos the gentle air

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden white to throw ;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher :
When to her Organ vocal breath was given
An Angel heard, and straight appear'd –
Mistaking Earth for Heaven!

Grand Chorus

As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the blest above;

So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.

7. Dryden

LXIV

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEMONT

AVENGE, O Lord! thy slaughter'd Saints, whose

Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones

Forget not: In thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks.

Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To Heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant, that from these may grow A hundred-fold, who, having learnt Thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

J. Milton

LXV

HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN FROM IRELAND

THE

HE forward youth that would appear,
Must now forsake his Muses dear,

Nor in the shadows sing

His numbers languishing.

'Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unused armour's rust,
Removing from the wall

The corslet of the hall.

So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urgéd his active star :

And like the three-fork'd lightning first,
Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide :

For 't is all one to courage high

The emulous, or enemy;

And with such, to enclose
Is more than to oppose.

Then burning through the air he went And palaces and temples rent;

And Caesar's head at last

Did through his laurels blast.

"Tis madness to resist or blame
The face of angry heaven's flame;
And if we would speak true,
Much to the Man is due

Who, from his private gardens, where He lived reservéd and austere

(As if his highest plot

To plant the bergamot)

Could by industrious valour climb

To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the Kingdoms old
Into another mould.

Though Justice against Fate complain, And plead the ancient Rights in vain But those do hold or break

As men are strong or weak.

Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,

And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.

What field of all the civil war

Where his were not the deepest scar?

And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art,

Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope

That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrook's narrow case;

That thence the Royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn :

While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands;

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try;

Nor call'd the Gods, with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right;

But bow'd his comely head

Down, as upon a bed.

- This was that memorable hour Which first assured the forcéd power: So when they did design

The Capitol's first line,

A Bleeding Head, where they begun,
Did fright the architects to run ;

And yet in that the State
Foresaw its happy fate!

And now the Irish are ashamed
To see themselves in one year tamed
So much one man can do

That does both act and know.