The Golden Treasury - Unknown

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man, and mild.

           His food was locusts, and what there doth spring

           With honey that from virgin hives distill'd;

           Parch'd body, hollow eyes, some uncouth thing

           Made him appear, long since from earth exiled.

           There burst he forth: All ye whose hopes rely

           On God, with me amidst these deserts mourn,

           Repent, repent, and from old errors turn!

           —Who listen'd to his voice, obey'd his cry?

           Only the echoes, which he made relent,

           Rung from their flinty caves, Repent! Repent!

W. DRUMMOND.

      SECOND BOOK

      SUMMARY

      This division, embracing the latter eighty years of the seventeenth century, contains the close of our Early poetical style and the commencement of the Modern. In Dryden we see the first master of the new: in Milton, whose genius dominates here as Shakespeare's in the former book,—the crown and consummation of the early period. Their splendid Odes are far in advance of any prior attempts, Spenser's excepted: they exhibit the wider and grander range which years and experience and the struggles of the time conferred on Poetry. Poetry now gave expression to political feeling, to religious thought, to a high philosophic statesmanship in writers such as Marvell, Herbert, and Wotton: whilst in Marvell and Milton, again, we find the first noble attempts at pure description of nature, destined in our own ages to be continued and equalled. Meanwhile the poetry of simple passion, although before 1660 often deformed by verbal fancies and conceits of thought, and afterward by levity and an artificial tone,—produced in Herrick and Waller some charming pieces of more finished art than the Elizabethan: until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself, and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of Wither and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper.—That the change from our early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and simplicity is undeniable: yet the far bolder and wider scope which Poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts then made to gain greater clearness in expression, in their results have been no slight compensation.

      62. ODE ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY

           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

           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.

           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?

           See how from far, upon the eastern road,

           The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:

           O 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 touch'd with hallow'd fire.

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 sympathise:

           It was no season then for her

           To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

           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.

           But He, her fears to cease,

           Sent down the meek-eyed Peace,

           She crown'd 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.

           No war, or battle's sound

           Was heard the world around:

           The idle spear and shield were high up hung;

           The hookéd Chariot stood

           Unstain'd with hostile blood;

           The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng;

           And kings sat still with awful eye,

           As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

           But peaceful was the night

           Wherin 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 oceán—

           Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

           While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave.

           The stars with deep amaze

           Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze,

           Bending one way their precious influence;

           And will not take their flight

          

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