d
the whole paradox of the Incarnation--Infinity in extremest
limitation--is nowhere realized with such intensity as by him. Yet,
magnificent as are his best lines, his verse sometimes becomes too like
the seventeenth-century Jesuit churches, with walls overladen with
decoration, with great languorous pictures and air heavy with incense;
and then we long for the dewy freshness of the early carols.

The representative Anglican poets of the seventeenth century, Herbert and
Vaughan, scarcely rise to their greatest heights in their treatment of
Christmas, but with them as with the Romanists it is the mystical note
that is dominant. Herbert sings:--

"O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted, light,
Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
To man, of all beasts, be not Thou a stranger.

Furnish and deck my soul, that thou may'st have
A better lodging than a rack or grave."{40}

And Vaughan:--

"I would I had in my best part
Fit rooms for Thee! or that my heart
Were so clean as
Thy manger was!
But I am all filth, and obscene:
Yet, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make clean.

Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
This leper haunt and soil thy door!
Cure him, ease him,
O release him!
And let once more, by mystic birth,
The Lord of life be born in earth."{41}

In Herrick--how different a country parson from Herbert!--we find a sort
of pagan piety towards the Divine Infant which, |82| though purely
English in its expression, makes us think of some French _Noeliste_ or
some present-day Italian worshipper of the _Bambino_:--

"Instead of neat enclosures
Of interwoven osiers,
Instead of fragrant posies
Of daffodils and roses,
Thy cradle, kingly Stranger,
As gospel tells,
Was nothing else
But here a homely manger.

But we with silks not crewels,
With sundry precious jewels,
And lily work will dress Thee;
And, as we dispossess Thee
Of clouts, we'll make a chamber,
Sweet Babe, for Thee,
Of ivory,
And plaster'd round with amber."{42}

Poems such as Herrick's to the Babe of Bethlehem reveal in their writers
a certain childlikeness, an _insouciance_ without irreverence, the spirit
indeed of a child which turns to its God quite simply and naturally,
which makes Him after its own child-image, and sees Hi