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Christmas with the Poets.

A CHAT ABOUT CERTAIN CHRISTMAS VERSES.

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HERE is no season of the year which brings to the hearts of young and old so many hallowed associations, so many pleasant memories, so many joyful anticipations as Christmas. The happy genius of the season diffuses its gracious influence amongst all classes, and in all directions; and whether we look to the delights of home and social intercourse, or to the aspect presented by nature, or to the efforts put forth by philanthropy, or to the benign influence of art and literature, or to the higher truths, proclaimed by the preacher, and affecting, however remotely, even those who dwell upon them least, we see on all hands, that which is congenial with the spirit of the time. There are few who do not in some way or other derive a benefit or blessing from the goodwill which prevails, and the Christian charity which scatters its gifts abroad; and certainly there is no home, however lonely, that has not a right, and an occasion to share in the general rejoicing; for to use the forcible and comprehensive words of Walter Scott:

"All hail, with uncontrolled delight,
And general voice, the happy night,
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down."

This festival, so dear to English hearts, and so widely honoured in English homes, is as might be expected often celebrated in the works of English poets; and it may neither be unpleasing nor unprofitable at the present time to recall some of their verses, which, however familiar, and however often quoted, are yet like the faces and voices of dear friends, ever welcome, and ever ready to reciprocate any expression of interest, solicitude, or affection, which we, on our part, may be ready to offer.

And if at this Christmas time we are to have the poets as guests, whose voice small we listen for more eagerly, whose face shall we welcome more gladly, than Shakespeare's? Those who find pleasure in perusing his works as they sit by the fireside in the winter evenings, when the toils of the day are over, have perhaps sometimes tried to imagine the delight with which his personal friends received him as a visitor in their homes; and have endeavoured to picture to themselves the earnest expectation with which his arrival was anticipated, and the gladness which was spread around by his presence; the cares of age being dispelled by the kindly glances of his calm, benign, and placid

face, and the gaiety of childhood and youth being heightened by his geniality and mirth, and by his “flashes of merriment, which were wont to set the table on a roar." This is a pleasant theme which might easily be enlarged upon, did not the limits of space and time, and the lines of our subject forbid; but though Shakespeare is no longer present amongst us in the flesh, he yet speaks to us in deathless words, and has something to say on the occasion of "this our great solemnity." For it was with a feeling of loving veneration for the sacred associations of the season, as well as with a deep knowledge of human nature, that he made Horatio and Marcellus, when keeping watch on the cold and frozen battlements of Elsinore, and agitated by the apparition of "the buried majesty of Denmark," speak of the legendary lore and traditional superstition most familiar to their minds, and allude in the following words to the happy influences supposed to prevail as Christmas approached :"Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes

Mar.

Hor.

Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long :
And then, they say, no spirit can walk 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.

So have I heard, and do in part believe it."

Some of us who feel a pride in laughing at the tales of superstition would not care to confess how far these words touch upon those impressions which have been deeply lodged and cherished in our own hearts. At all events, we may all of us give to the words of Marcellus the qualified assent conveyed in the reply of Horatio. Few and simple as these lines are, they illustrate Shakespeare's large and easy style, and his perfect command of the versification which he adopted; for he did not, as some have done, torture the English language into the forms of rhythm, but taught it to flow, as it were, naturally and gracefully along the channels of verse.

But having started on the train of thought suggested by the heading of this paper, how are we irresistibly attracted by the enchanting strains of that magnificent hymn in which Milton celebrates the "Morning of Christ's Nativity "-a poem which charms the sense by the marvellous melodies of its versification, refines the intellect by the purity of its thoughts, and exalts the soul by the grandeur and sublimity of its conceptions. In this poem we may see the germ of the "Paradise Lost." Here we hear, as it were, the beat of those pinions which were afterwards "with no middle flight above the Aonian mount;" here we behold the youthful poet in the pursuit of things "unattempted yet in prose or rhyme;" and here, as in the "Paradise Lost," Milton glories with the exultation of a Titan in the overthrow of the antagonistic powers of evil. The theme which, after long deliberation, he chose for his immortal epic, when "fallen upon evil times, and evil tongues, in darkness, and with dangers compassed round," was the same which had captivated his youthful imagination, when he walked o'er hill and vale,

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through sunny mead or shady wood, rejoicing in the celestial splendour of that "light which never was on sea or land." This poem, composed by Milton when he was twenty-one years of age, stands alone and peerless. We compare his "Lycidas" with the "Adonais" of Shelley; we are accustomed to say of his "Comus" that it is almost infinitely superior to Beaumont and Fletcher's "Faithful Shepherdess ;" we glory in contending that the splendour of the "Paradise Lost" is not diminished by a comparison with the masterpieces of Greece and Rome; but when we come to the Hymn on Christ's Nativity, where is the standard by which we shall measure it? If we glance through English literature in search of a companion work, the only one which is suggested to the mind is Spenser's exquisitely melodious “Hymn of Heavenly Beauty;" but the two poems are so dissimilar both in subject and treatment that it is useless, if not impossible, to draw any comparison between them.

From such a poem it is a sort of presumption to select any stanzas for special admiration, but the poem is too long to quote entire. Never were the aspects of nature with which we are familiar at this time of the year treated with an imagery, more truly poetical, than by Milton in the two following stanzas :

"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."

Equally happy, and equally exalted, is his allusion to the heavenly orbs:

"The stars, with deep amaze,

Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence;

And will not take their flight,

For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer that often warned them thence ;

But in their glimmering orbs did glow,

Until the Lord himself bespake, and bid them go."

The following stanzas, besides their sublimity, show how felicitously Milton could employ the stores of learning which were at his command:— "The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

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The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament ;
From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting genius is with sighing sent;

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."

The description in this last stanza is no splendid imitation of Homer or Virgil, of Dante or Petrarch, but comes to us freshly wafted from the willow-fringed banks of English streams. Who shall attempt to read such lines audibly, with any hope of giving due effect to their tumultuous harmonies? The stanzas either end in a full harmonious close, or after swelling out through various undulations of music into a grand diapason, sweetly and gradually die in soft and gentle cadence.

While speaking with poets who have written of Christmas we ought not to pass by one, now almost forgotten, who has given us a charming description of winter fireside delights, contrasting the lot of the hapless wanderer, exposed to the terrors of the pitiless storm, with the happier portion of the man surrounded with the comforts of home, and the blessings of culture and refinement; and who when singing of the "Pleasures of Hope" does not forget to make an appropriate allusion to the events of that night when angels were sent from heaven on an embassy of love and hope to man. Describing the passing of a happy and disembodied spirit on its mysterious voyage to another world, Campbell says that it is greeted with

"The sweet tones of star-born melody :

Wild as that hallowed anthem sent to hail
Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale,

When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still
Watched on the holy towers of Zion's hill."

Nor can we refrain from listening awhile to the great "Minstrel of the North," who entered with great zest and heartiness into Christmas festivities, honouring both the ancient custom and the truth which the custom was intended to celebrate; and who, delighting in the traditions of antiquity, and in feudal and chivalric lore, has brought before us with life and animation the scenes of old romance. How he loved to indulge the bent of his mind in these directions may be seen by a reference to the introduction to the Sixth Canto of "Marmion;" where, after giving us a vivid picture of the rude feasting and carousing carried on by the heathen Danes at their great festival of Iol, he goes on to describe in his own vigorous and heroic style the festive and religious rites and ceremonies observed by our forefathers at the corresponding Christian feast which we now celebrate.

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And well our Christian sires of old
Loved when the year its course had rolled
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.

Domestic and religious rite

Gave honour to the holy night;

The hall was dressed with holly green,
Forth to the wood did merry men go
To gather in the mistletoe.

Then opened wide the Baron's hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside,
And ceremony doff'd his pride.

The fire, with well dried logs supplied,
Went roaring up the chimney wide;
The huge hall table's oaken face,
Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace,
Bore then upon its massive board
No mark to part the squire or lord.

There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by
Plum-porridge stood and Christmas pie.

England was merry England when

Old Christmas brought his sports again,"

These lines are not perhaps elaborated and polished with any great attention to art, but we may say of them in Scott's own words

"If unmelodious is the song,

It is a hearty note, and strong;"

And heartiness and strength are the characteristics of all Scott's poems.

Incomplete as this paper must necessarily be, it would be unpardonably so, if it contained no reference to the Poet Laureate, whose mind, as revealed in very many of his noblest productions, seems to be deeply impressed and fascinated, not only by the outward shows and manifestations of Christmas joy, but also by the deep and invisible source whence the joy and hope are derived. It is his way to look through the outward forms of things to their "secret meaning" as he himself calls it. Nowhere is this tendency of his more fully developed than in that wonderful cluster of poems gathered together under the title "In Memoriam." In them we have several touching and beautiful allusions to Christmas. Of Christmas bells, heard in the shadow of the deep loss which had fallen upon him by reason of the death of a dearly-loved friend, he thus writes

"They my troubled spirit rule,
For they controlled me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touched with joy,
The merry, merry bells of Yule."

He describes, too, what almost all of us have felt, when he speaks of the gloom which sometimes hangs over the Christmas gathering, through

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