Hymn on Christ’s Nativity
IT was the winter wildWhile the heaven-born ChildAll meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;Nature in awe to HimHad doffed her gaudy trim,With her great Master so to sympathise:It was no season then for herTo wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fairShe woos the gentle airTo 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 eyesShould look so near upon her foul deformities.
But He, her fears to cease,Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;She, crowned with olive green, came softly slidingDown 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 soundWas heard the world around:The idle spear and shield were high uphung;The hooked chariot stoodUnstained with hostile blood;The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;And kings sat still with awful eye,As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the nightWherein the Prince of LightHis 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 stars, with deep amaze,Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,Bending one way their precious influence;And will not take their flightFor 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.
And though the shady gloomHad given day her room,The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,And hid his head for shame,As his inferior flameThe new-enlightened world no more should need;He saw a greater Sun appearThan his bright throne or burning axletree could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn,Or ere the point of dawn,Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;Full little thought they thanThat the mighty PanWas 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 sweetTheir hearts and ears did greetAs never was by mortal fingers strook—Divinely-warbled voiceAnswering 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 soundBeneath the hollow roundOf Cynthia’s seat the airy region thrilling,Now was almost wonTo think her part was done,And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;She knew such harmony aloneCould hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sightA globe of circular light,That with long beams the shamefaced night arrayed;The helmed CherubimAnd sworded SeraphimAre seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,Harping in loud and solemn quire,With unexpressive notes, to Heaven’s new-born Heir.
Such music (as ’tis said)Before was never madeBut when of old the Sons of Morning sung,While the Creator greatHis 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 chimeMove in melodious time;And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;And with your ninefold harmonyMake up full consort to the angelic symphony.
For if such holy songEnwrap our fancy long,Time will run back and fetch the age of gold;And speckled VanityWill 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 thenWill down return to men,Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,Mercy will sit betweenThroned 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 infancyThat on the bitter crossMust 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 clangAs on Mount Sinai rang,While the red fire and smouldering clouds out-brake:The aged Earth aghastWith terror of that blastShall 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 blissFull and perfect is,But now begins; for from this happy dayThe 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 humRuns through the arched roof in words deceiving.Apollo from his shrineCan no more divine,With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:No nightly trance or breathed spellInspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
The lonely mountains o’erAnd the resounding shoreA voice of weeping heard and loud lament;From haunted spring and daleEdged with poplar pale,The parting Genius is with sighing sent;With flower-inwoven tresses tornThe Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
In consecrated earthAnd on the holy hearthThe Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;In urns, and altars round,A drear and dying soundAffrights the Flamens at their service quaint;And the chill marble seems to sweat,While each peculiar Power forgoes his wonted seat.
Peor and BaalimForsake 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 dreadHis burning idol all of blackest hue;In vain with cymbals’ ringThey 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 seenIn Memphian grove or green,Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud:Nor can he be at restWithin his sacred chest;Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;In vain with timbrelled anthems darkThe sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.
He feels from Juda’s landThe dreaded Infant’s hand;The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;Nor all the gods besideLonger 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.
So, when the sun in bed,Curtained with cloudy red,Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,The flocking shadows paleTroop to the infernal jail,Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave;And the yellow-skirted faysFly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
But see! the Virgin blestHath laid her Babe to rest;Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:Heaven’s youngest-teemed starHath fixed her polished car,Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending:And all about the courtly stableBright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.