SOURCE: Davies, H. Neville. “Milton's Nativity Ode and Drummond's ‘An Hymne of the Ascension.’” Scottish Literary Journal 12, no. 1 (May 1985): 5-23.

In the following essay, Davies contends that Drummond's “An Hymne of the Ascension” influenced Milton's “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.”

Perhaps it is doubt about precedence that has inhibited consideration of how Drummond of Hawthornden's ‘An Hymne of the Ascension’ and Milton's ‘On the Morning of Christ's Nativity’ are related. The neglect is unfortunate because the similarities between the two poems—or two hymns, the greater part of Milton's poem being designated ‘Hymn’—are such as to suggest direct indebtedness. But discussion of that indebtedness requires, at the very least, some sort of reasoned hypothesis about which poem influenced the other. It is no use assuming, just because Drummond habitually borrowed so much, that he must have been the borrower on this occasion; and if we make...