masters, yet do their inferior part nearly as well as they their higher, uttering a music of marvellous and individual sweetness, which no mere musical care could secure, but which springs essentially from music in the thought gathering to itself musical words in melodious division, and thus fashioning for itself a fitting body.  The melody of their verse is all their own—­as original as the greatest art-forms of the masters.  Of Drummond, then, here are two sonnets on the Nativity; the first spoken by the angels, the second by the shepherds.

  The Angels.

  Run, shepherds, run where Bethlehem blest appears. 
    We bring the best of news; be not dismayed: 
  A Saviour there is born more old than years,
    Amidst heaven’s rolling height this earth who stayed. 
    In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid
  A weakling did him bear, who all upbears;
    There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid,
  To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres: 
  Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth. 
    This is that night—­no, day, grown great with bliss,
    In which the power of Satan broken is: 
  In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth! 
    Thus singing, through the air the angels swam,
    And cope of stars re-echoed the same.

  The Shepherds.

  O than the fairest day, thrice fairer night! 
    Night to best days, in which a sun doth rise
    Of which that golden eye which clears the skies
  Is but a sparkling ray, a shadow-light! 
  And blessed ye, in silly pastors’ sight, simple.
    Mild creatures, in whose warm[88] crib now lies
  That heaven-sent youngling, holy-maid-born wight,
    Midst, end, beginning of our prophecies! 
  Blest cottage that hath flowers in winter spread! 
    Though withered—­blessed grass, that hath the grace
    To deck and be a carpet to that place! 
  Thus sang, unto the sounds of oaten reed,
    Before the babe, the shepherds bowed on knees;
    And springs ran nectar, honey dropped from trees.

No doubt there is a touch of the conventional in these.  Especially in the close of the last there is an attempt to glorify the true by the homage of the false.  But verses which make us feel the marvel afresh—­the marvel visible and credible by the depth of its heart of glory—­make us at the same time easily forget the discord in themselves.

The following, not a sonnet, although it looks like one, measuring the lawful fourteen lines, is the closing paragraph of a poem he calls A Hymn to the Fairest Fair.