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England's Antiphon
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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 choir,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed 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 doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great master so to sympathize:
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,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace.
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war, or battle's sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hookéd chariot stood
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye, awe-filled.
As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds, with wonder whist, silent.
Smoothly the water kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild Oceän,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm[110 - The morning star.] sit brooding on the charméd wave.
The stars with deep amaze
Stand fixed in stedfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer,[111 - The God of shepherds especially, but the God of all nature—the All in all, for Pan means the All.] that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new enlightened world no more should need:
He saw a greater sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axle-tree could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn,
Or e'er the point of dawn, ere ever.
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row:
Full little thought they than then.
That the mighty Pan[112 - Milton here uses the old Ptolemaic theory of a succession of solid crystal concentric spheres, in which the heavenly bodies were fixed, and which revolving carried these with them. The lowest or innermost of these spheres was that of the moon. "The hollow round of Cynthia's seat" is, therefore, this sphere in which the moon sits.]
Was kindly come to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook—
Divinely warbled voice
Answering the stringéd noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loath to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.
Nature, that heard such sound,
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat[113 - That cannot be expressed or described.] the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.
Другие электронные книги автора George MacDonald
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Книга дельная. Без воды, приводятся реальные кейсы и способы их разрешения. Много практичных полезных советов и методик. Кое-что уже испробовала в дел...
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