And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that Heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give, And I with thee will choose to live.

ODE ON THE NATIVITY.

MILTON.

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,

B

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.

* * *

*

THE HYMN.

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.

*

No war, or battle's sound,

Was heard the world around:

*

The idle spear and shield were high up hung, The hooked chariot stood

Unstain'd with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng:

And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovereign 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 ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

*

*

*

The shepherds on the lawn,
Or e'er the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they then,
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 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.

Nature, that heard such sound,

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the aëry 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 helmed 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 't is 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 base of heaven's deep organ blow;
And, with your ninefold harmony,
Make up full concert 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 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 inchain'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 centre to the surface 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 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.