Page:Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics.djvu/62
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Book
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail, Swindges the scaly horrour of his folded tail.
The oracles are dumb;No voice or hideous hum Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving:Apollo from his shrineCan no more divine,With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:No nightly trance or breathéd spellInspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
The lonely mountains o’erAnd the resounding shoreA voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;From haunted spring and daleEdged with poplar paleThe parting Genius is with sighing sent;With flower-inwoven tresses tornThe nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
In consecrated earthAnd on the holy hearthThe Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;In urns, and altars roundA drear and dying soundAffrights the Flamens at their service quaint;And the chill marble seems to sweat,While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat.
Peor and BaalimForsake their temples dim,With that twice-batter’d god of Palestine; And moonéd AshtarothHeaven’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.
And sullen Moloch, fled, Hath left in shadows dreadHis burning idol all of blackest hue;