Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1879-12-25

u
The trumpet spake not to the armed
-throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
AS if they surely knew their sovereign |
Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Whereing the prince of light
His reign of peace upon the earth began
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kissed,
Whispering new joys TO the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on
the charmed wave.
The shepherds on the lawn,
Or e'er the point Of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in rustic row;
Full little thought they then
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them be-
low;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts
30 busy keep.
Such music (as tbs said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning
sung,
While the Creator great
His consultations set,
And the well-balanced world on hinges
hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their
oozy channel keep.
Ring out, We crystal spheresl
Once bless our human ears,
II ye have power to touch our senses so /;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the bass of Heavens deep organ
blow;
And with your nine-fold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic
symphony.
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will rum back, and fetch the age
of gold;
And speckled vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly
mould;
And hell itself will pass away,
Andleave her dolorous mansions to
the peering day.
ed, IIQbH anu JuSllcc JHcH
will down return to men.
Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories
wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds
down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her hig
palace hall.
But wisest fate says No
This must not yet be sol
TThe babe yet lies in smiling infancy
That on the. bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to gloTify.
Yet first to those ye chained in sleep
The wakeful trump of doom must
thunder through the deep.
The oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideeuS hum
Runs through the arched roof in words
deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shrek the steep of Del
phOs leaving;
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspired the pale-eyed priest from the
prophetic cell.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Tramping 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 timbrelled anthems dark,
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his
worshipped ark.
He feels from Judas land
The dreaded infants hand
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky
syn;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide
Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky
twine;
Our babe, to show his God-head true
Can in His swaddling bands control
the damned crew.
So, when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The fiocking shadows pale
Troop to the internal 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
ending;
Heavens Youngest teemed star
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmade lamp
attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed angels sit in order
Servieeahlo