Nor bend they not their eyne
Where the watch-fires shine,
By shepherds fed, on hills of Bethlehem:
They mark, in goodly wise,
The city of David rise,
The gates and towers of rare Jerusalem;
And hear the 'scaped Kedron fret,
And night dews dropping from the leaves of Olivet.
But now the setting moon
To curtained lands must soon,
In her obedient fashion, minister;
She first, as loath to go,
Lets her last silver flow
Upon her Master's sealed sepulchre;
And trees that in the gardens spread,
She kisseth all for sake of His low-lying head,
Then 'neath the rim goes down;
And night with darker frown
Sinks on the fateful garden watched long;
When some despairing eyes,
Far in the murky skies,
The unwished waking by their gloom foretell;
And blackness up the welkin swings,
And drinks the mild effulgence from celestial wings.
Last, with amazed cry,
The hosts asunder fly,
Leaving an empty gulf of blackest hue;
Whence straightway shooteth down,
By the Great Father thrown,
A mighty angel, strong and dread to view;
And at his fall the rocks are rent,
The waiting world doth quake with mortal tremblement;
The regions far and near
Quail with a pause of fear,
More terrible than aught since time began;
The winds, that dare not fleet,
Drop at his awful feet,
And in its bed wails the wide ocean;
The flower of dawn forbears to blow,
And the oldest running river cannot skill to flow.
Pages:
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249