England's Antiphon

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shame-faced night arrayed;
The helméd cherubim
And sworded seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn choir,
With unexpressive[114 - By hinges he means the axis of the earth, on which it turns as on a hinge. The origin of hinge is hang. It is what anything hangs on.] notes to heaven's new-born heir.

Such music, as 'tis said,
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,[115 - This is an apostrophe to the nine spheres (see former note), which were believed by the ancients to send forth in their revolutions a grand harmony, too loud for mortals to hear. But no music of the lower region can make up full harmony without the bass of heaven's organ. The music of the spheres was to Milton the embodiment of the theory of the universe. He uses the symbol often.]
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out, ye crystal spheres;
Once bless our human ears—
If ye have power to touch our senses so;[116 - Consort is the right word scientifically. It means the fitting together of sounds according to their nature. Concert, however, is not wrong. It is even more poetic than consort, for it means a striving together, which is the idea of all peace: the strife is together, and not of one against the other. All harmony is an ordered, a divine strife. In the contest of music, every tone restrains its foot and bows its head to the rest in holy dance.]
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
And, with your ninefold harmony,
Make up full consort[117 - Symphony is here used for chorus, and quite correctly; for symphony is a voicing together. To this symphony of the angels the spheres and the heavenly organ are the accompaniment.] to the angelic symphony.[118 - Die of the music.]

For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the age of gold;
And speckled vanity
Will sicken soon and die;[119 - Not merely swings, but lashes about.]
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;
And hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea, truth and justice then
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 high palace-hall.

But wisest Fate says "No;
This must not yet be so."
The babe lies yet in smiling infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify.
Yet first, to those y-chained in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The agéd earth, aghast
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world's last sessiön,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is:
But now begins; for from this happy day,
The old dragon, under ground
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway;
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges[120 - Full of folds or coils.] the scaly horror of his folded tail.[121 - The legend concerning this cessation of the oracles associates it with the Crucifixion. Milton in The Nativity represents it as the consequence of the very presence of the infant Saviour. War and lying are banished together.]

The oracles are dumb:[122 - The genius is the local god, the god of the place as a place.]
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving;
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting genius[123 - The Lars were the protecting spirits of the ancestors of the family; the Lemures were evil spirits, spectres, or bad ghosts. But the notions were somewhat indefinite.] is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemures[124 - Flamen was the word used for priest when the Romans spoke of the priest of any particular divinity. Hence the peculiar power in the last line of the stanza.] moan with midnight plaint;
In urns and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the flamens[125 - Jupiter Ammon, worshipped in Libya, in the north of Africa, under the form of a goat. "He draws in his horn."] at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.