s 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 dread
His burning idol, all of blackest hue:
In vain with cymbals' ring
They call the grisly king
In dismal dance about the furnace blue:
The Brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

"He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand,
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne:
Nor all the gods beside
Dare longer there abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine.
Our Babe to shew His Godhead true
Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew."

These verses, as if loath to die, linger with a certain persistence in
mind and ear. This is the "mighty line" which critics talk about! And
just as in an infant's face you may discern the rudiments of the future
man, so in the glorious hymn may be traced the more majestic lineaments
of the "Paradise Lost."

Strangely enough, the next noblest dirge for the unrealmed divinities
which I can call to remembrance, and at the same time the most eloquent
celebration of the new power and prophecy of its triumph, has been
uttered by Shelley, who cannot in any sense be termed a Christian poet.
It is one of the choruses in "Hellas," and perhaps had he lived longer
amongst us, it would have been the prelude to higher strains. Of this I
am certain, that before his death the mind of that brilliant genius was
rapidly changing,--that for him the cross was gathering attractions round
it,--that the wall which he complained had been built up between his
heart and his intellect was being broken down, and that rays of a strange
splendour were already streaming upon him through the interstices. What
a contrast between the darkened glory of "Queen Mab"--of which in
afterlife he was ashamed, both as a literary work and as an expression of
opinion--and the intense, clear, lyrical light of this triumphant poem!--

"A power from the unknown God,
A Promethean conqueror came:
Like a triumphal path he trod
The thorns of death and shame.
A mortal shape to him
Was like the vapour dim
Which the orient planet animates with light.
Hell, sin, and slavery came
Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
Nor prey'd until their lord had taken flight.
The moon of Mah