Although suggested by the season, and by a solitary dinner, it is not my purpose to indulge in personal reminiscence and talk. Let all that pass. This is Christmas-day, the anniversary of the world's greatest event. To one day all the early world looked forward; to the same day the later world looks back. That day holds time together. Isaiah, standing on the peaks of prophecy, looked across ruined empires and the desolations of many centuries, and saw on the horizon the new star arise, and was glad. On this night eighteen hundred years ago, Jove was discrowned, the Pagan heaven emptied of its divinities, and Olympus left to the solitude of its snows. On this night, so many hundred years bygone, the despairing voice was heard shrieking on the Aegean, "Pan is dead, great Pan is dead!" On this night, according to the fine reverence of the poets, all things that blast and blight are powerless, disarmed by sweet influence:—
"Some say that ever 'gainst the season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike;
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm:
So hallowed and so gracious is the time."
The flight of the Pagan mythology before the new faith has been a favourite subject with the poets; and it has been my custom for many seasons to read Milton's "Hymn to the Nativity" on the evening of Christmas-day. The bass of heaven's deep organ seems to blow in the lines, and slowly and with many echoes the strain melts into silence. To my ear the lines sound like the full-voiced choir and the rolling organ of a cathedral, when the afternoon light streaming through the painted windows fills the place with solemn colours and masses of gorgeous gloom. To-night I shall float my lonely hours away on music:—
"The oracles are dumb,
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving:
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
"The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament:
From haunted spring, and dale
Edged with poplars pale,
The parting genius is with sighing sent:
With flower-enwoven tresses torn
The nymphs in twilight shades of tangled thickets mourn.
"Peor and Baalim
Forsake their temples dim
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth,
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine!
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.
"And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol, all of blackest hue:
In vain with cymbals' ring
They call the grisly king
In dismal dance about the furnace blue:
The Brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.
"He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand,
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne:
Nor all the gods beside
Dare longer there abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine.
Our Babe to shew His Godhead true
Can in His swaddling bands control the damned crew."
These verses, as if loath to die, linger with a certain persistence in mind and ear. This is the "mighty line" which critics talk about! And just as in an infant's face you may discern the rudiments of the future man, so in the glorious hymn may be traced the more majestic lineaments of the "Paradise Lost."
Strangely enough, the next noblest dirge for the unrealmed divinities which I can call to remembrance, and at the same time the most eloquent celebration of the new power and prophecy of its triumph, has been uttered by Shelley, who cannot in any sense be termed a Christian poet. It is one of the choruses in "Hellas," and perhaps had he lived longer amongst us, it would have been the prelude to higher strains. Of this I am certain, that before his death the mind of that brilliant genius was rapidly changing,—that for him the cross was gathering attractions round it,—that the wall which he complained had been built up between his heart and his intellect was being broken down, and that rays of a strange splendour were already streaming upon him through the interstices. What a contrast between the darkened glory of "Queen Mab"—of which in afterlife he was ashamed, both as a literary work and as an expression of opinion—and the intense, clear, lyrical light of this triumphant poem!—