Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/49

 ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY

��ius at its highest point; but if we would read the full record of his youth, we must turn to the Latin poems. He gradually desisted from Latin as a means of poetic expres- sion in later life, abandoning it altogether, except for a stray trifle, after his thirty- second year. But during his life at college

��he poured into this alien medium all the first fervor of his imagination. When we say, therefore, that he was, as he averred himself to be, not " timely happy," in put- ting out the flowers of his song, we must say it with this reservation of the Latin poems in mind.

��ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY

(1629)

For an account in Milton's own words of the origin of this ode, the reader is referred to the closing lines of the Sixth Latin Elegy, transla- tion, p. 339. He there calls it a " birthday gift for Christ," and says that it was begun on Christmas morning. That it was not written in response to a general invitation on the part of the academic authorities, as has sometimes been conjectured, but sprang from a personal impulse, seems clear from the context of that passage.

��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 10

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 mor- tal clay.

Ill

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, 20

And all the spangled host keep watch in

squadrons bright ?

IV

See how from far upon the Eastern road The star-led Wisards haste with odours

sweet ! Oh ! 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 touched with

hallowed fire.

THE HYMN

��It was the winter wild, While the heaven-born child 30

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; Nature, in awe to him, Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize : It was no season then for her To wanton with the Sun, her lusty Para-

��Only with speeches fair She woos the gentle air To hide her guilty front with innocent

snow,

And on her naked shame, 40

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 deformi- ties.

�� �