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(From Airs of Palestine)
THE NIGHT was moonless; Judah’s shepherds kept | |
| Their starlight watch; their flocks around them slept. | |
| To heaven’s blue fields their wakeful eyes were turned, | |
| And to the fires that there eternal burned. | |
| Those azure regions had been peopled long | 5 |
| With Fancy’s children, by the sons of song: | |
| And there the simple shepherd, conning o’er | |
| His humble pittance of Chaldean lore, | |
| Saw, in the stillness of a starry night, | |
| The swan and eagle wing their silent flight; | 10 |
| And from their spangled pinions, as they flew, | |
| On Israel’s vales of verdure shower the dew; | |
| Saw there the brilliant gems, that nightly flare, | |
| In the thin mist of Berenice’s hair; | |
| And there Boötes roll his lucid wain, | 15 |
| On sparkling wheels, along the ethereal plain; | |
| And there the Pleiades, in tuneful gyre, | |
| Pursue forever the star-studded lyre; | |
| And there, with bickering lash, heaven’s charioteer | |
| Urge round the Cynosure his bright career. | 20 |
| While thus the shepherds watched the host of night, | |
| O’er heaven’s blue concave flashed a sudden light. | |
| The unrolling glory spread its folds divine | |
| O’er the green hills and vales of Palestine; | |
| And lo! descending angels, hovering there, | 25 |
| Stretched their loose wings, and in the purple air | |
| Hung o’er the sleepless guardians of the fold, | |
| When that high anthem, clear and strong and bold, | |
| On wavy paths of trembling ether ran: | |
| “Glory to God, benevolence to man, | 30 |
| Peace to the world”; and in full concert came, | |
| From silver tubes and harps of golden frame, | |
| The loud and sweet response, whose choral strains | |
| Lingered and languished on Judæa’s plains. | |
| Yon living lamps, charmed from their chambers blue | 35 |
| By airs so heavenly, from the skies withdrew: | |
| All?—all but one, that hung and burned alone, | |
| And with mild lustre over Bethlehem shone. | |
| Chaldea’s sages saw that orb afar | |
| Glow unextinguished; ’t was Salvation’s Star. | 40 |
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