Peor and Baaelim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth, _the Assyrian Venus_.
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;[126]
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz[127] 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[128] king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue.
The brutish gods of Nile as fast--
Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis--haste.
Nor is Osiris[129] seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshowered[130] 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 Judah'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.
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