Then passing through the scenes of watchful fire,
And misty regions of wide air next under,
And hills of snow and lofts of piléd thunder,
May tell at length how green-eyed Neptune raves,
In Heaven's defiance mustering all his waves;
Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When beldame Nature in her cradle was;
And last of kings and queens and heroes old,
Such as the wise Demodocus1 once told
In solemn songs at king Alcinous' feast
While sad Ulysses' soul and all the rest
Are held with his melodious harmony
In willing chains and sweet captivity.

But fie, my wandering muse, how thou dost stray!
Expectance calls thee now another way;
Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent
To keep in compass of thy predicament:

Then quick about thy purposed business come,
That to the next I may resign my room.

[Then Ens is represented as father of the Predicaments,2 his ten
sons, whereof the eldest stood for Substance with his canons,
which Ens, thus speaking, explains.]

GOOD luck befriend thee, son; for at thy birth
The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth;
Thy drowsy nurse hath sworn she did them spy
Come tripping to the room where thou didst lie,
And, sweetly singing round about thy bed,
Strew all their blessings on thy sleeping head.

She heard them give thee this, that thou shouldst still
From eyes of mortals walk invisible:

Yet there is something that doth force my fear,
For once it was my dismal hap to hear

A sibyl old, bow-bent with crooked age,

That far events full wisely could presage,
And in time's long and dark prospective glass
Foresaw what future days should bring to pass:
Your son, said she (nor can you it prevent),
Shall subject be to many an accident.

1 Alluding to the eighth book of the Odyssey.

Or categories. If the reader does not understand metaphysics, he will not be much the wiser for any explanation I could give him within the space of a note.

O'er all his brethren he shall reign as king,
Yet every one shall make him underling,
And those that cannot live from him asunder
Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under,
In worth and excellence he shall out-go them,
Yet, being above them, he shall be below them:
From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing.
To find a foe it shall not be his hap,

And peace shall lull him in her flowery lap;
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door
Devouring war shall never cease to roar:
Yea it shall be his natural property

To harbour those that are at enmity.

What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not
Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?

[The next, Quantity and Quality, spake in prose, then
Relation was called by his name.]

RIVERS, arise!! whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulfy Dun;
Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads;
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath;
Or Severn swift, guilty of maidens' death;
Or rocky Avon; or of sedgy Lee;

Or coaly Tine; or ancient hallowed Dee;

Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name
Or Medway smooth; or royal towered Thame.
[The rest was prose.]

III.

ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.

Composed 1629.2

I.

THIS is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,

1 In invoking these rivers, Milton had his eye particularly upon that admirable episode in Spenser of the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, where the several rivers are introduced in honour of the cere mony.-Newton. 2 When Milton was twenty-one years old.

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.

II.

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.

III.

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?

IV.

See how from far upon the eastern road

The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
Oh, 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 touched with hallowed fire.1

While the Heaven-born child

All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lics:

Nature in awe to him

Had doffed her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize:

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

1 Alluding to Is. vi. 6, 7.

Only with speeches fair

She woos the gentle air

II.

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,

III.

Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;

She, crowned 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 an universal peace' through sea and land.

No war, or battle's sound,

IV.

Was heard the world around:

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

Unstained 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

V

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began: The winds with wonder whist2

Smoothly the waters kissed,

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave

The stars with deep amaze

Stand fixed in stedfast gaze,

VI.

Bending one way their precious influence,

And will not take their flight,

For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;

1 "Strikes peace," a Latinism, fœdus ferire.

2 Silent.

But in their glimmering orbs did glow,

Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

VII.

And though the shady gloom

Had given day her room,

The sun himself withheld his wonted speed, And hid his head for shame,

As his inferior flame

The new enlightened world no more should need; He saw a greater sun appear

Than his bright throne, or burning axletree, could bear.

VIII.

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

IX.

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook, Divinely-warbled voice

Answering the stringéd noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took: The air, such pleasure loth to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

X.

Nature that heard such sound,

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling,1

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.

XI.

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light,

That with long beams the shame-faced night arrayed, The helméd cherubim,