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ODE ON THE MORNING 
 OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY 
 BY JOHN MILTON ^^ Mt 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 WALTER TAYLOR FIELD 
 
 PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK 
 
;;i}rtARYotCOf«RFSs| 
 \wo Ooptes RecelY«} 
 
 Copynitht^ntry I 
 AS* A ^c., No. I 
 COPY ti. 
 
 f(<-^ 
 
 
 .1 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY 
 WALTER TAYLOR FIELD 
 
MILTON IN THE NATIVITY ODE 
 
 f^ Milton we find two personalities inter- 
 fused and blended into^ one. He is, first^ 
 the courtly gentleman, the accomplished 
 musician, the elegant scholar, the warm- 
 hearted friend of Charles Diodati and Edward 
 King ; again, he is the great unfathomable one, the 
 preacher of morality, the apostle of liberty, the 
 searcher of Divine mysteries. There is a wide 
 difference between the poet of Comus and the 
 prophet of Paradise Lost, yet in each are the two 
 natures. The growing preponderance of the 
 sterner qualities was due partly to an evolution of 
 character under the stress of bitter personal ex- 
 periences, — loss of sight, loss of fortune, loss of 
 position and influence,— but, more than this, to the 
 growing spirit of religious austerity which marked 
 the seventeenth century in England and which 
 culminated in Cromwell and the Commonwealth. 
 Standing historically between the Elizabethan 
 era and the Puritan Reformation, he showed the 
 
influence of both,— his earlier work having more 
 of brightness, his later more of cold sublimity. 
 Like a tall cathedral spire at sunset, we see him 
 on the one side glorified by the light of a fading 
 day, on the other wrapped in the shadows. 
 
 For many years it ^vas the Puritan Milton who 
 •was known in literature. He ^vas considered only 
 as the poet of Paradise Lost,— lofty, majestic, far- 
 seeing, profound, clothed in the mantle of philos- 
 ophy, moving like a seer along the highway of his 
 verse. But more recently attention has been at- 
 tracted to his Elizabethan qualities, not only in the 
 Paradise Lost but particularly in his so-called 
 minor poems — which are minor only in respect 
 to size, and which include L' Allegro and II Pen- 
 seroso, that superb pair of lyrics; Comus, the 
 peerless masque ; Lycidas, the elegy which unites 
 delicacy with passion ; and the Ode on the Nativ- 
 ity, with its burst of pure religious ecstacy. 
 
 Of them all, the Ode on the Nativity is per- 
 haps the least read and yet the most truly repre- 
 sentative. It lacks the flawless elegance of L' Al- 
 legro and II Penseroso, the hghtness of Comus 
 and the intensity of Lycidas, but it shows, more 
 than any other poem of Milton's, I believe, the 
 
two sides of his genius. It is joyous and yet 
 earnest; bright and yet full of a stately dignity 
 which is a prophecy of the grandeur of Paradise 
 Lost. 
 
 Its faults were those which were bequeathed 
 to its author by a former generation,— by Donne 
 and others of his school, who were the popular 
 poets of Milton's earlier years. A few strained 
 metaphors and overwrought comparisons mark 
 this influence, but the strength, the vigor, the 
 polish, the sincerity of it, were new in English 
 literature and announced the advent of a poet of 
 heroic mould. 
 
 Milton wrote the Ode while in college at 
 Cambridge. Prior to this he had produced a few 
 unimportant poems, metrical versions of two of 
 the Psalms composed at fifteen, a few creditable 
 Latin elegies and several ordinary pieces of Eng- 
 lish verse. On the Christmas morning of his 
 twenty-first year, however, inspired by the sweet 
 significance of the day and filled with the spirit 
 of peace and joy with which it has touched so 
 many hearts,he launched into this first of his real 
 flights of song. His sixth Latin epistle, written 
 soon after to Charles Diodati, describes the cir- 
 
cumstance. He says : "But if you will know what 
 I am doing, ... I am singing the King of 
 Heaven, bringer of peace, and the fortunate days 
 promised by the Holy Book, the wanderings of 
 God and the stabling under a poor roof of Him 
 who rules with his Father the realms above ; the 
 star that led the wizards, the hymning of angels 
 in the air and the gods flying to their endangered 
 fanes. This poem I made as a birthday gift for 
 Christ ; the first light of Christmas dawn brought 
 me the theme." 
 
 Its burden is Peace on Earth. No sound of 
 war breaks the stillness of the holy night. The 
 shepherds, talking together as they watch their 
 flocks, are suddenly greeted with such music as 
 ^vas never heard before save when the sons of 
 morning sang together in the dawn of the Crea- 
 tion. Cherubim and seraphim with outstretched 
 wings, a radiant circle in the heavens, strike their 
 harps in honor of their new-born Lord. The 
 ancient gods have lost their power; the oracles 
 are dumb; the nymphs have left the haunted 
 springs ; the priests and flamens see strange prod- 
 igies before the altars. In vain they call upon 
 their pagan deities, the Babe of Bethlehem has 
 
conquered them. But the mother lays the Holy 
 Child to rest while the youngest star of heaven 
 holds her lamp above him, and angels surround 
 the manger where he lies. 
 
 Such is the argument, — a simple theme, and 
 yet clothed with a beauty of phrase and imagery 
 which gives it singular distinction. It is this 
 elaboration of detail, together with an essential 
 dignity of movement and musical cadence that 
 designate the Miltonic touch. The ornament is 
 not confined to happy phraseology ; it embraces 
 a wealth of allusion, a breadth of knowledge, a sug- 
 gestiveness that appeal particularly to the scholar. 
 Few other poets have been able to put so much 
 into a phrase. '*I like Milton and Butler," said 
 Dr. Johnson, once, to Boswell, "because they 
 make me think." This thought stimulus together 
 with a rare classical influence makes the read- 
 ing of Milton an education. Says Matthew Ar- 
 nold: "In our race are thousands of readers, 
 presently there will be millions, who do not know 
 a word of Greek and Latin, and will never learn 
 those languages. If this host of readers are ever 
 to gain any sense of the power and charm of the 
 great poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is not 
 
through translations of the ancients, but through 
 the original poetry of Milton, who has the like 
 power and charm, because he has the like great 
 style. ' 
 
 But perhaps the most remarkable quality of 
 Milton's verse is its melody. We do not need to 
 be told that he was an accomplished musician, 
 and that his father was a musician before him. 
 His verse shows the musical ear. It has in it a 
 subtle power which is akin to magic. We need 
 not try to analyze it, for it eludes analysis ; but we 
 cannot fail to be moved by it. Children are 
 moved by it, not knowing what it means. Those 
 majestic Alexandrines, which make the last line of 
 each stanza in the Ode, were in form borrowed 
 from Spenser, from whom Milton in his earlier 
 poems borrowed much, — but there is something 
 in them distinctly Miltonic. Then, too, they sug- 
 gest so much. We feel the solemnity and the 
 mystery of the Incarnation in that hne, 
 
 "And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay." 
 
 We feel the peace of the new era of love and 
 good will in the phrase, 
 
 "While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave." 
 
We feel the majesty of Omnipotence in the words, 
 
 "And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep." 
 
 Even the names of the pagan gods, in the twenty- 
 second and succeeding stanzas, roll out with a 
 a largeness that commands respect. 
 
 It must not be thought that this music and this 
 beauty came to Milton as an inspiration. His 
 work was not that of an improvisatore, but of a 
 painstaking and consummate artist. Every word 
 was chosen and every phrase polished. A manu- 
 script of his in the library of Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, shows erasures and recastings which 
 proves the efficacy of careful work as opposed to 
 slipshod rhapsodizing. 
 
 But, after all, the greatness of Milton's verse 
 is not in its haunting melody, nor in its beauty of 
 phrase, nor in its intellectuality. It arises out of 
 the greatness of the poet himself. In it we see 
 Milton the patriot, the reformer, the idealist, the 
 high-minded Christian, the stainless hero; his in- 
 dividuality is stamped upon every line that he ever 
 wrote. **He who would not be frustrate of his 
 hope to write well hereafter in laudable things," 
 he says quaintly, in the Apology for Smectym- 
 
nuus, "ought himself be a true poem." This is 
 the secret of the vitality of Milton's work. It is 
 vivified and ennobled by the character which 
 shines out through it. 
 
 The traveler may climb today the narrow stair- 
 case which leads to Milton's quarters at Christ's, 
 Cambridge,— may stand in the little room in 
 which the Ode on the Nativity was begun on that 
 Christmas morning nearly three hundred years 
 ago, may look out of the window and see the 
 roofs and turrets and bit of lawn which Milton 
 saw,— all these are suggestive of the tangible 
 presence of a great poet,— but to know Milton 
 and to realize the greatness of his work, one must 
 look farther than mere externals ; he must have 
 a spiritual insight which will let him look deeply, 
 a sympathy with the scholar's hfe which will 
 let him look appreciatively, a pure heart which 
 will let him look clearly. A sincere admiration 
 for Milton is the touchstone of character. If one 
 can take this great soul into his own, he may feel 
 that he is in some sense, himself, above the little- 
 nesses of life. 
 
 • 
 
 Walter Taylor Field 
 
ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S 
 NATIVITY 
 
 (COMPOSED 1629) 
 
 I 
 ^BWHIS is the month, and this the happy morn, 
 m U Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King, 
 ^■P^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. 
 
 II 
 
 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. 
 
 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, 
 And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons 
 bright? 
 
 IV 
 
 See how from far upon the eastern road 
 
 The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet 1 
 
 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 
 
 I 
 
 It was the winter wild, 
 While the heaven-born child 
 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 paramour. 
 
 II 
 
 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. 
 
Ill 
 
 But he, her fears to cease, 
 Sent down the meek-eyed Peace : 
 She, crowned 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. 
 
 IV 
 
 No war, or battle's sound. 
 Was heard the world around ; 
 
 The idle spear and shield were high uphung ; 
 The hooked chariot stood 
 Unstained with hostile blood ; 
 
 The trumpet spake not to the arm^d throng ; 
 And kings sat still with awful eye. 
 As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by. 
 
 5 
 
V 
 
 But peaceful was the night 
 Wherein the Prince of Light 
 His reign of peace upon the earth began. 
 The winds, with wonder Avhist, 
 Smoothly the waters kissed, 
 Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean, 
 Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
 While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed 
 wave. 
 
 VI 
 
 The stars, with deep amaze, 
 Stand fixed in steadfast gaze. 
 Bending one way their precious influence. 
 And will not take their flight, 
 For all the morning light, 
 Or Lucifer that often warned them thence ; 
 But in their glimmering orbs did glow. 
 Until their Lord himself bespake and bid them go. 
 
VII 
 
 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-enlightened world no more should need: 
 He saw a greater Sun appear 
 
 Than his bright throne or burning axletree could 
 bear. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The shepherds on the lawn, 
 Or ere the point of dawn, 
 Sat 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. 
 
IX 
 
 When such music sweet 
 Their hearts and ears did greet 
 As never was by mortal finger strook, 
 Divinely- warbled voice 
 Answering the stringed noise, 
 As all their souls in blissful rapture took : 
 The air, such pleasure loth to lose, 
 With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly 
 close. 
 
 X 
 
 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. 
 
 8 
 
XI 
 
 At last surrounds their sight 
 A globe of circular light, 
 That with long beams the shamefaced Night ar- 
 rayed ; 
 The helmed cherubim 
 And sworded seraphim 
 Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed, 
 Harping in loud and solemn quire. 
 With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born 
 Heir. 
 
 XII 
 
 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. 
 
XIII 
 
 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. 
 
 XIV 
 
 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. 
 
 10 
 
XV 
 
 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 
 
 XVI 
 
 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 ychained in sleep, 
 The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through 
 the deep, 
 
 11 
 
XVII 
 
 With such a horrid clang 
 As on Mount Sinai rang, 
 While the red fire and smouldering clouds out- 
 brake : 
 The aged Earth, aghast 
 With terror of that blast, 
 Shall from the surface to the centre shake. 
 When, at the world's last session, 
 The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his 
 throne. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 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 the scaly horror of his folded tail. 
 
 12 
 
XIX 
 
 The Oracles are dumb; 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 Runs through the arched 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. 
 
 XX 
 
 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. 
 
 13 
 
XXI 
 
 In consecrated earth, 
 And on the holy hearth, 
 The Lars and Lemures 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 forgoes his wonted seat. 
 
 XXII 
 
 Peor and Baalim 
 Forsake their temples dim, 
 With that twice-battered god of Palestine ; 
 And mooned 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. 
 
 14 
 
XXIII 
 
 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. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Nor is Osiris seen 
 In Memphian grove or green. 
 Trampling the unshowered grass with lo wings 
 loud; 
 Nor can he be at rest 
 Within his sacred chest; 
 Nought but prof oundest Hell can be his shroud ; 
 In vain, w^ith timbreled anthems dark. 
 The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshiped ark. 
 
 15 
 
XXV 
 
 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 damned 
 crew. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 So, when the sun in bed. 
 Curtained with cloudy red. 
 Pillows his chin upon an orient wave. 
 The flocking shadows pale 
 Troop to the infernal jail, 
 Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave. 
 And the yellow -skirted fays 
 
 Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved 
 maze. 
 
 16 
 
XXVII 
 
 But see! the Virgin blest 
 Hath laid her Babe to rest. 
 Time is our tedious song should here have ending: 
 Heaven's youngest-teemed star 
 Hath fixed her polished car, 
 Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending; 
 And all about the courtly stable 
 Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable. 
 
 17 
 
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