ed art than the Elizabethan:
until in the courtly compliments of Sedley it seems to exhaust itself,
and lie almost dormant for the hundred years between the days of Wither
and Suckling and the days of Burns and Cowper.--That the change from our
early style to the modern brought with it at first a loss of nature and
simplicity is undeniable: yet the far bolder and wider scope which
Poetry took between 1620 and 1700, and the successful efforts then made
to gain greater clearness in expression, in their results have been no
slight compensation.

62. ODE ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.

This is the month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty
Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome Him to this His new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

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 quire
From out His secret altar touch'd with hallow'd 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 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 s