“Cambridge... for Seven Years” 1625–1632There, untouched by any reproach, in the good graces of all upright men, for seven
years I devoted myself to the traditional disciplines and liberal arts, until I had attained
the degree of Master, as it is called, cum laude. Then... of my own free will I returned
home, to the regret of most of the fellows of the college, who bestowed on me no
little honor. (CPW IV.1, 613)The new masters had to swear to continue their “regency” or active studies in the
university for five additional years, though normally only those holding fellowships
did so. Milton instead began a five-year “regency” of private studies at home.
“Early Song”
On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (December, 1629) is Milton’s first major poem,
but already it displays elements that remain constants in Milton’s poetry: allusive-
ness, revisionism, mixture of genres, stunning originality, cosmic scope, prophetic
voice. Its theme is the Incarnation and its meaning to humankind, nature, and the
entire cosmos. There are two parts. A four-stanza Proem (six lines of iambic pen-
tameter and a concluding alexandrine) imitates verse forms in Chaucer, Spenser,
and Milton’s own “Fair Infant.” The speaker is both humble and audacious. Plac-
ing himself with the shepherds who came first to the manger, he offers the hymn
that follows as his gift to the infant Christ, terming it a “humble ode,” a pastoral.^100
But he also titles it a hymn, associating it with the angelic hymns at the Nativity and
also with the messianic prophecies of Isaiah: “And joyn thy voice unto the Angel
Quire, / From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow’d fire” (ll. 27–8).^101 With
these lines Milton formally assumes the role of prophet–poet.
In the “Hymn” proper he invents, with striking success, a strophe for the English
ode: eight-line stanzas with lines of varying lengths (6 6 10 6 6 10 8 12), culminating in
a stately alexandrine; and an intricate, interlaced rhyme scheme (aabccbdd).^102 It looks
back to various exemplars of the high lyric: Homeric hymns and Pindaric odes to
Apollo; their neo-Latin imitators Marullo and Pontano; and their Christian counter-
parts, the literary hymns of Prudentius, Minturno, Mantuan, and Spenser.^103 There are
many Spenserian elements: allegorical personifications, the masque-like descent of the
“meek-eyd Peace,” and onomatopoeia – descriptions of the old serpent who “Swindges
the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail” (l. 172) and of the Last Judgment at which “The
wakefull trump of doom must thunder through the deep” (l. 156). As a pastoral the
poem revises Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, which celebrated (probably) the birth of the
Roman consul Pollio’s son as the beginning of a new Golden Age.^104 Milton celebrates
the birth of the Messiah who will restore the true Golden Age at the Millennium.
The Nativity Ode also offers a counterstatement, an alternative vision, to Milton’s
own Elegy V: a winter poem set against that spring poem; a celebration of the
incarnate Christian God against that celebration of Apollo and the pagan deities; an