Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875.

John Milton

LXII. Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity

THIS is the month, and this the happy morn

Wherein the Son of Heaven’s Eternal King

Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring;

For so the holy sages once did sing

That He our deadly forfeit should release,

And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,

And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty

Wherewith He wont at Heaven’s high council-table

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside; and, here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

Afford a present to the Infant God?

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain

To welcome Him to this His new abode,

Now while the heaven, by the sun’s team untrod,

Hath took no print of the approaching light,

And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

See how from far, upon the eastern road,

The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:

O run, prevent them with thy humble ode

And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;

Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,

And join thy voice unto the Angel quire

From out His secret altar touch’d with hallow’d fire.

It was the winter wild

While the heaven-born Child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;

Nature in awe to Him

Had doff’d her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize:

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

Only with speeches fair

She woos the gentle air

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;

And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;

Confounded, that her Maker’s eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

But He, her fears to cease,

Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;

She, crown’d with olive green, came softly sliding

Down through the turning sphere,

His ready harbinger,

With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;

And waving wide her myrtle wand,

She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

No war, or battle’s sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high uphung;

The hookèd chariot stood

Unstain’d with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng;

And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

But peaceful was the night

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began:

The winds, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kist

Whispering new joys to the mild oceàn—

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.

The stars, with deep amaze,

Stand fix’d in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence;

And will not take their flight

For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer that often warn’d them thence;

But in their glimmering orbs did glow

Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.

And though the shady gloom

Had given day her room,

The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,

And hid his head for shame,

As his inferior flame

The new-enlighten’d world no more should need;

He saw a greater Sun appear

Than his bright throne, or burning axle-tree could bear.

The shepherds on the lawn

Or ere the point of dawn

Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they than

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below;

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep:—

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet

As never was by mortal finger strook—

Divinely-warbled voice

Answering the stringèd noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took:

The air, such pleasure loth to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

Nature, that heard such sound

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia’s seat the airy region thrilling,

Now was almost won

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;

She knew such harmony alone

Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light

That with long beams the shamefaced night array’d;

The helmèd Cherubim

And sworded Seraphim

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display’d,

Harping in loud and solemn quire

With unexpressive 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;

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;

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 to the angelic symphony.

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,

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,

Orb’d 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 yet lies in smiling infancy

That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both Himself and us to glorify:

Yet first, to those ychain’d 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 aged Earth aghast

With terror of that blast

Shall from the surface to the centre shake,

When, at the world’s last sessiòn,

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 usurpèd sway;

And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The Oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:

No nightly trance or breathèd 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 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 Lemurès moan with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter’d god of Palestine;

And moonèd Ashtaroth

Heaven’s queen and mother both,

Now sits 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.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove, or green,

Trampling the unshower’d grass with lowings loud:

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest;

Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrell’d anthems dark

The sable-stolèd sorcerers bear his worshipt ark.

He feels from Juda’s land

The dreaded Infant’s hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;

Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show His Godhead true,

Can in His swaddling bands control the damnèd crew.

So, when the sun in bed

Curtain’d with cloudy red

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter’d ghost slips to his several grave;

And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

But see! the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:

Heaven’s youngest-teemèd star

Hath fix’d her polish’d car,

Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:

And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harness’d Angels sit in order serviceable.