HOME of the very gems of

SOME

our poetry-quaintly set, albeit they may be, in their old style-have been produced in honor of the blessed nativity of our Lord, and the good old English household festivities and hospitalities of that most beautiful holiday of Christendom. A full compilation of them would swell into volumes. A classification of them has been made in England by some genial spirit; it presents a rosary of sparkling jewels. There are no less

than six principal divisions in this classification, including carols from the Anglo-Norman Period to the time of the Reformation; Christmas poems of the Elizabethan Period; Songs and Carols of the Time of the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, (a dry time for them, by the way,) and the Restoration, (when they burst forth again like trumpets in an orchestra;) Christmas Verses of the Eighteenth Century; Songs of the Nineteenth century, &c. Under these general divisions are we know not how many subclasses, such as Religious Carols, Boar'sHead Carols, Carols in Praise of Ale, (foaming most lustily,) Carols in Praise of the Holly and the Ivy, the Wassail Bowl, &c., &c.

Here is one of the earliest of these poems and one of the best,-nearer four hundred than three hundred years old. It is from the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum :

"IN EXCELSIS GLORIA. "WHEN Christ was born of Mary free,

In Bethlehem, in that fair citie, Angels sang there with mirth and glee,

In Excelsis Gloria!

But amid all the English Christmas Minstrelsy, there comes forth from the period of the Commonwealth a resounding note like the thunder of a cathedral organ, or that sublime trumpet-voice which Moses describes as "waxing louder and louder " above the awful tumults of Sinai. It is John Milton's grand

"HYMN TO THE NATIVITY. "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:
It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

66

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 vail 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 cloud 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 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 kiss'd, 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 fix'd in steadfast gaze, Bending one way their precious influence;

And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warn'd
them thence;

But in their glimm'ring orbs
did glow,

Until their Lord himself be-
spake, and bid them go.

"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 enlighten'd world no
more should need:

He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne, or burn-
ing 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 then,

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below;

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,

"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,

"When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

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

Answering the stringèd 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 airy 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 shame-faced night array'd;

The helmèd cherubim, And sworded seraphim,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn choir,

[Heir. With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born VOL. III, No. 6.-MM

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 bass of heaven's deep organ blow; And, with your ninefold harmony,

Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

"For, if such holy song Inwrap 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 mold; And hell itself will pass away,

[day.

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering

"But wisest Fate says No,
This must not yet be so;
The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;

So both himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those enchain'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 surface to the center shake;

When, at the world's last session,

"In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

"Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter'd God of Palestine; And moonèd Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine; The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,

Thammuz mourn.

"And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals' ring,
They 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 seen

In Memphian grove, or green,
Trampling the unshower'd grass
with lowings loud:
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;

Naught but profoundest hell can

be his shroud;

true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

"So, when the Sun in bed, Curtain'd with cloudy red, Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moonloved maze.

"But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:

Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord, with handmaid lamp, attending :

And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harness'd angels sit in order serviceable."

"Wake me again, my mother dear,
That I may hear

The peal of the departing year.
O well I love, the step of Time
Should move to that familiar chime:
Fair fall the tones that steep

The Old Year in the dews of sleep,
The New guide softly in

With hopes to sweet sad memories akin!
Long may that soothing cadence ear, heart,
conscience win."

With this sweet strain we may well contrast the still sweeter, though more manly lines of Wordsworth, addressed to his brother. It is full of his fine, subtile spirit of religion and wisdom, and a beautiful example of his peculiar style :

(Heaven only witness of the toil) A barren and ungrateful soil. Yet, would that Thou, with me and

mine,

Hadst heard this never-failing rite;

And seen on other faces shine

A true revival of the light,

Which Nature and these rustic powers,

In simple childhood, spread through ours!