“Some say that ever ’gainst the season comes
  Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated
  The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
  And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;
  The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike;
  No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm: 
  So hallowed and so gracious is the time.”

The flight of the Pagan mythology before the new faith has been a favourite subject with the poets; and it has been my custom for many seasons to read Milton’s “Hymn to the Nativity” on the evening of Christmas-day.  The bass of heaven’s deep organ seems to blow in the lines, and slowly and with many echoes the strain melts into silence.  To my ear the lines sound like the full-voiced choir and the rolling organ of a cathedral, when the afternoon light streaming through the painted windows fills the place with solemn colours and masses of gorgeous gloom.  To-night I shall float my lonely hours away on music:—­

        “The oracles are dumb,
        No voice or hideous hum
    Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving: 
        Apollo from his shrine
        Can no more divine
    With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
      No nightly trance or breathed spell
  Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

        “The lonely mountains o’er,
        And the resounding shore,
    A voice of weeping heard and loud lament: 
        From haunted spring, and dale
        Edged with poplars pale,
    The parting genius is with sighing sent: 
      With flower-enwoven tresses torn
  The nymphs in twilight shades of tangled thickets mourn.

        “Peor and Baalim
        Forsake their temples dim
    With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
        And mooned Ashtaroth,
        Heaven’s queen and mother both,
    Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine! 
      The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,
  In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded 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.

        “He feels from Juda’s land
        The dreaded Infant’s hand,
    The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne: 
        Nor all the gods beside
        Dare longer there abide,
    Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine. 
      Our Babe to shew His Godhead true
  Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew.”

These verses, as if loath to die, linger with a certain persistence in mind and ear.  This is the “mighty line” which critics talk about!  And just as in an infant’s face you may discern the rudiments of the future man, so in the glorious hymn may be traced the more majestic lineaments of the “Paradise Lost.”