“Cambridge... for Seven Years” 1625–1632anticipated but deferred restoration of the Golden Age against that celebration of
the annual springtime renewal of Nature. Some topics are directly contrasted. In
Elegy V the earth delights in the embraces of the Sun-God; in the Nativity Ode she
can no longer “wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour” (l. 36). In Elegy V the
poet urges the classical gods to remain in their forest homes; in the Nativity Ode he
celebrates the expulsion of all the pagan gods from all their shrines. The effect is not
to repudiate the earlier poem but to review its classical ethos from a “higher” Christian
perspective. This poem also sets up a contrast to the “Fair Infant” funeral ode,
underscored by the use of the same stanzaic form in the Proem. That poem treats
the death, this one the birth, of a fair infant in winter; that infant in figure, this one
in truth, is able to slake God’s wrath for sin; there a remarkable birth was predicted,
here one is celebrated; there, Astraea and Mercy (or Truth) returned to Heaven,
here, they descend to earth again.
The “Hymn” section centers on the uneasy encounter of the natural order with
this supernatural event.^105 In conception and structure it develops strategies which
come to be characteristic of Milton’s poems. For one, the particular subject is made
to encompass all time and space as Milton continually shifts the focus from the
morning of Christ’s nativity back to Creation and forward to Doomsday, and, in
cinematographic fashion, from the Bethlehem scenes to the widest cosmic perspec-
tive. The poem moves quickly from the manger scene to Nature herself, first per-
sonified as a wanton harlot camouflaging her guilt with a “Saintly Vail” of snow,
and then as the awestruck natural order responding as if to the Second Coming, not
the first: the stars will not take flight and the sun supposes himself made superfluous
by the greater Sun/Son. Another homely scene follows – the Shepherds chatting
and tending their sheep – and at once opens out to the hymns of the angelic choir
and the music of the spheres, described in wonderfully evocative lines:
Ring out ye Crystall sphears,
Once bless our human ears,
(If ye have power to touch our senses so)
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the Base of Heav’ns deep Organ blow,
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to th’Angelike symphony.For if such holy Song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold. (ll.125–35)This music leads the poet’s imagination from Creation to the Millennium and from
the Nativity to Doomsday, as he joins nature in supposing that the Golden Age is
indeed imminent.^106 Then he is abruptly recalled to the Nativity moment: “But