61. SAINT JOHN BAPTIST.

       The last and greatest Herald of Heaven's King

       Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,

       Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,

       Which he more harmless found than 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.

       Table of Contents

SUMMARY.

       Table of Contents

      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,