On the Morning of Christ's Nativity 227

Harping in loud and solemn choir

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,

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.

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 ychained 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 agèd 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.

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.

The cracles 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.

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;

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity 229

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 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 foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baälim

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.

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 unshowered grass with lowings loud:

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest;

Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrelled anthems dark

The sable stolèd sorcerers bear his worshiped ark.

He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand;

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyen;
Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide

Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew.

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.

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 fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.

John Milton [1608-1674]

FAIRYLAND

THE FAIRY BOOK

In summer, when the grass is thick, if mother has the time,
She shows me with her pencil how a poet makes a rhyme,
And often she is sweet enough to choose a leafy nook,
Where I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairy-
book.

In winter, when the corn's asleep, and birds are not in

song,

And crocuses and violets have been away too long,

Dear mother puts her thimble by in answer to my look, And I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairybook.

And mother tells the servants that of course they must contrive

To manage all the household things from four till halfpast five,

For we really cannot suffer interruption from the cook, When we cuddle close together with the happy Fairy.. book.

Norman Gale [1862

FAIRY SONGS

I

From "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"

OVER hill, over dale,

Through bush, through brier,

Over park, over pale,

Through flood, through fire,