Publisher's Synopsis
I, WHO erewhile the happy Garden sungBy one man's disobedience lost, now singRecovered Paradise to all mankind, By one man's firm obedience fully triedThrough all temptation, and the Tempter foiledIn all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious EremiteInto the desert, his victorious fieldAgainst the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence10By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire, As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute, And bear through highth or depth of Nature's bounds, With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deedsAbove heroic, though in secret done, And unrecorded left through many an age: Worthy to have not remained so long unsung.Now had the great Proclaimer, with a voiceMore awful than the sound of trumpet, criedRepentance, and Heaven's kingdom nigh at hand20To all baptized. To his great baptism flockedWith awe the regions round, and with them cameFrom Nazareth the son of Joseph deemedTo the flood Jordan-came as then obscure, Unmarked, unknown. But him the Baptist soonDescried, divinely warned, and witness boreAs to his worthier, and would have resignedTo him his heavenly office. Nor was longHis witness unconfirmed: on him baptizedHeaven opened, and in likeness o
