The Complete Poetry of John Milton (18 page)
Read The Complete Poetry of John Milton Online
Authors: John Milton
Tags: #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Poetry, #European
XIV
For if such holy Song
Enwrap our fancy long,
135
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,
28
And speckl’d
29
vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould,
And Hell it self will pass away,
140
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering
30
day.
XV
Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb’d in a Rain-bow;
31
and like glories wearing
Mercy will sit between,
145
Thron’d in Celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stealing,
And Heav’n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the Gates of her high Palace Hall.
XVI
But wisest Fate sayes no,
150
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 glorifie:
155
Yet first to those ychain’d in sleep,
32
The wakefull trump of doom must thunder through the deep.
33
XVII
With such a horrid clang
As on mount
Sinai
rang
While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake:
34
160
The aged Earth agast
With terrour of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake,
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadfull Judge in middle Air shall spread his throne.
XVIII
165
And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
Th’ old Dragon
35
under ground
In straiter limits bound,
170
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wroth to see his Kingdom fail,
Swindges
36
the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail.
XIX
The Oracles are dumm,
37
No voice or hideous humm
175
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo
from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shreik the steep of
Delphos
leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
180
Inspires the pale-ey’d
38
Priest from the prophetic cell
XX
The lonely mountains o’re,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
39
From haunted spring, and dale
185
Edg’d with poplar pale,
The parting Genius
40
is with sighing sent;
With flowr-inwov’n tresses torn
The Nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
XXI
In consecrated Earth,
190
And on the holy Hearth,
The
Lars
, and
Lemures
41
moan with midnight plaint;
In Urns, and Altars round,
A drear, and dying sound
Affrights the
Flamins
at their service quaint;
195
And the chill Marble seems to sweat,
42
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.
XXII
200
And mooned
Ashtaroth
,
Heav’ns Queen and Mother both,
Now sits not girt with Tapers holy shine,
The Libyc
Hammon
shrinks his horn,
In vain the
Tyrian
Maids their wounded
Thamuz
mourn.
XXIII
205
And sullen
Moloch
fled,
Hath left in shadows dred
His burning Idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with Cymbals ring,
They call the grisly king,
210
In dismall dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of
Nile
as fast,
Isis
and
Orus
, and the Dog
Anubis
hast.
XXIV
Nor is
Osiris
seen
In
Memphian
Grove, or Green,
215
Trampling th’ unshowr’d
44
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 Timbrel’d Anthems dark
220
The sable-stoled Sorcerers bear his worshipt Ark.
45
XXV
He feels from
Judas
Land
The dredded Infants hand,
The rayes of
Bethlehem
blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside,
225
Longer dare abide,
Not
Typhon
huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe to shew his Godhead true,
Can in his swadling bands
46
controul the damned crew.
XXVI
So when the Sun in bed,
230
Curtain’d with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an Orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to th’ infernall jail,
47
Each fetter’d Ghost slips to his severall grave,
235
And the yellow-skirted
Fayes
Fly after the Night-steeds, leaving their Moon-lov’d maze.
XXVII
But see the Virgin blest,
Hath laid her Babe to rest.
Time is our tedious
48
Song should here have ending:
240
Heav’ns youngest teemed Star
49
Hath fixt her polisht Car,
Her sleeping Lord with Handmaid Lamp attending,
And all about the Courtly Stable,
Bright-harnest
50
Angels sit in order serviceable.
(
Dec. 1629
)
1
The theme is the celebration of Christ’s harmonizing of all life by becoming mortal man. This gift of praise for the birthday of Christ has been divided into a pattern of creative sun or silence (I–VIII), the concord which is the essence of music (IX–XVIII), and the conquest and reconciliation of discordant paganism (XIX–XXVI). The return to silence in the last stanza rounds out the pattern drawn by Arthur Barker in
UTQ
, X (1941), 167-81. Don C. Allen (
The Harmonious Vision
) emphasizes the conflict between Milton’s aesthetic and intellectual daemons (p. 25), but concludes that the timelessness, immutable Nature, and harmony of God unify the poem (p. 29). The symbolic darkness in the later stanzas, seen against the intermingled and identified light and music of the earlier ones, is dispersed, as Rosemond Tuve reminds us in
Images and Themes
, p. 71, by the heavenly love, described in XXVII in images of brightness, which will work a perpetual peace. The fullest annotation will be found in Albert S. Cook’s notes on the ode in
Trans. of the Connecticut Acad. of Arts and Sciences
, XV (1909), 307–68. See Maren-Sofie Røstvig’s numerological analysis in
The Hidden Sense and Other Essays
(Oslo, 1963) for the contrast between the earthly concepts of the proem and the regenerative aspects of the hymn itself.
2
Tne reversed combinations “wedded Maid” and “Virgin Mother” create a chiasmus, or X, the sign of Christ.
3
Christ’s
kenosis
or emptying himself of his godhead (Phil. ii. 6-8).
4
the three Wise Men.
5
anticipate.
6
Isa. vi. 6-7: “Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips.”
7
polluted.
8
Rev. iii. 18: “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.”
9
The dove Peace (the “turtledove” of l. 50) brought an olive branch to the ark as a sign of harmony with nature; the reference suggests the descent of the dove (the Spirit of God) at Christ’s baptism. The myrtle wand, sacred to Venus, emphasizes the Love which has created Peace on Earth.
10
the heavens.
11
No war took place in the Roman Empire for some years before Jesus’ birth.
12
hushed.
13
the halcyons, which were supposed to breed only when the sea is calm; the waves are thought of as under a spell. The halcyon, or kingfisher, was a symbol of Christ. Compare
PL
I, 19-22; VII, 233-37.
14
The stars, shining toward Bethlehem, are exerting all their power of good fortune on the Christ-child.