/ His youth void of crime and chaste is joined to this / by stern morals and without stain of hand. / With like nature, shining with sacred vestment and lustral waters, [65] / does the priest rise to go to the hostile gods. / By this rule it is said wise Tiresias lived / after his eyes were put out, and Ogygian Linus,16 / and Calchas fugitive from his appointed house, and old / Orpheus with the vanquished beasts among the forsaken caves. [70] / Thus the one poor of feast, thus Homer, drinker of water, / carried the man of Ithaca through the vast seas / and through the monster-making palace of the daughter17 of Perseis and Apollo, / and shallows dangerous with Siren songs, / and through your mansions, infernal king, where by dark blood [75] / he is said to have engaged the trooping shades. / For truly the poet is sacred to the gods, and priest of the gods, / and his hidden heart and lips breathe Jove. / But if you will know what I am doing (if only at least / you consider it to be important to know whether I am doing anything) [80] / I am singing the King, bringer of peace by his divine origin,18 / and the blessed times promised in the sacred books, / and the crying of our God and his stabling under the meagre roof, / who with his Father inhabits the heavenly realms; / and the heavens insufficient of stars and the hosts singing in the air, [85] / and the gods suddenly destroyed in their temples. / I dedicate these gifts in truth to the birthday of Christ, / gifts which the first light of dawn brought to me. / For you these thoughts formed on my native pipes are also waiting; / you, when I recite them, will be the judge for me of their worth. [90]

(Dec. 1629)

1 For Diodati, see. El. 1, n. 1.

2 the elegiac couplet.

3 that is, becoming man on earth.

4 As god of wine, who loosens care, Bacchus inspired music and poetry.

5 See El. 5, n. 3.

6 See El. 4, n. 10. Thyoneus is Bacchus, also called Lyaeus (l. 21), meaning “deliverer from care,” and Teumesian Euan (l. 23), “Euoe” being a shout heard at his festivals.

7 See El. 1, n. 3. Reference is to Epistles from Pontus, IV, viii, 80–83.

8 Anacreon.

9 Horace in his Odes.

10 Mt. Massicus in Campania, which was celebrated for its excellent wine.

11 Bacchus because of the wine-filled festivals, Apollo because Diodati was preparing for a medical career, and Ceres because of the feasts.

12 referring to Orpheus.

13 Muse of comedy and bucolic poetry; Erato (l. 51) is the Muse of lyric and amatory poetry. Liber, a god of vine-growers, was identified with Bacchus; but he also was a spirit of creativeness.

14 Cerberus, guardian of Hades.

15 Pythagoras and his school practised asceticism, particularly in eating.

16 The Theban Linus instructed Orpheus and Hercules on the lyre; Calchas (l. 69) was the Greek seer at Troy.

17 Circe.

18 the Nativity Ode, written in English (“on my native pipes,” l. 89) around Christmas 1629.

The Passion1

I

               Ere-while of Musick, and Ethereal mirth,

               Wherwith the stage of Ayr and Earth did ring,

               And joyous news of heav’nly Infants birth,

               My muse with Angels did divide2 to sing;

5

   5          But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

                        In Wintry solstice like the short’n’d light

               Soon swallow’d up in dark and long out-living night.

II

               For now to sorrow must I tune my song,

               And set my Harp to notes of saddest wo,

10

   10        Which on our dearest Lord did sease e’re long

               Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse then so,

               Which he for us did freely undergo:

                 Most perfect Heroe,3 try’d in heaviest plight

               Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight.

III

15

   15        He sov’ran Priest stooping his regall head

               That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,4

               Poor fleshly Tabernacle entered,

               His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies;

               O what a Mask5 was there, what a disguise!

20

  20                Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,

               Then lies him meekly down fast by his Brethrens side.

IV

               These latter scenes confine my roving vers,

               To this Horizon is my Phœbus6 bound;

               His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,

25

   25        And former sufferings other where are found;

               Loud o’re the rest Cremona’s Trump7 doth sound;

                 Me softer airs befit, and softer strings

               Of Lute, or Viol still, more apt for mournful things.

V

               Befriend me night, best Patroness of grief,

30

   30        Over the Pole thy thickest mantle throw,

               And work my flatter’d fancy to belief,

               That Heav’n and Earth are colour’d with my wo;

               My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

                 The leaves should all be black wheron I write,

35

   35        And letters where my tears have washt a wannish white.8

VI

               See, see the Chariot, and those rushing wheels

               That whirl’d the Prophet9 up at Chebar flood;

               My spirit som transporting Cherub feels,

               To bear me where the Towers of Salem10 stood,

40

   40        Once glorious Towers, now sunk in guiltles blood;

                 There doth my soul in holy vision sit

               In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatick fit.

VII

               Mine eye hath found that sad Sepulchral rock

               That was the Casket of Heav’ns richest store,

45

   45        And here though grief my feeble hands up-lock,

               Yet on the soft’n’d Quarry would I score

               My plaining vers as lively as before;

                 For sure so well instructed are my tears,

               That they would fitly fall in order’d Characters.

VIII

50

   50        Or should I thence hurried on viewles wing,

               Take up a weeping on the Mountains wild,11

               The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring

               Would soon unboosom all thir Echoes mild,

               And I (for grief is easily beguil’d)

55

  55                Might think th’ infection of my sorrows loud

               Had got a race of mourners on som pregnant cloud.

(Unfinished, Mar. 1630)

1 Intended as a kind of sequel to the Nativity Ode, which is mentioned in the first stanza, these verses seem to be only an induction to the main subject, Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion. An appended note indicates why the poem was not completed: “This Subject the Author finding to be above the yeers he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfi’d with what was begun, left it unfinisht.”

2 a musical term meaning to make musical divisions (measures); but perhaps “divide into parts between them.”

3 Here Christ is paralleled with Hercules.

4 “Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle” was by God “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows” (Heb.