Whispering new joys to the wild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave”—
at such a time, we say, it would be pleasant to hear the shrill voices of the Waits cleaving the cold, starlit air in some such quaint old ditty as the “Cherry-tree Carol” or “The Three Ships.” No doubt, too, would we but confess it, there would come to us a little wicked enhancement of pleasure in the reflection that the artists without were a trifle less comfortable than the hearer within. That rogue Tibullus had a shrewd notion of what constitutes true comfort when he wrote, Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem—which, freely translated, means, How jolly it is to sit by the fireside and listen to other fellows singing for your benefit in the cold without! But that idea we should dismiss as unworthy, and even try to feel a little uncomfortable by way of penance; and then, when their song was ended, and we heard their departing footsteps scrunching fainter and fainter in the snow, and their voices dying away until they became the merest suggestion of an echo, we should perhaps find—for these are to be ideal Waits—that their song had left behind it in the listener’s soul a starlit silence like that of the night without, but the stars should be heavenly thoughts.
These are ideal Waits; the real ones might be less agreeable or salutary. But have we far to look for such? Are there not on the shelves yonder a score of immortal minstrels only waiting our bidding to sing the sacred glories of the time? Shall we ask grave John Milton to tune his harp for us, or gentle Father Southworth, or impassioned Crashaw, or tender Faber? These are Waits we need not scruple to listen to, nor fail to hear with profit.
Milton’s Ode on the Nativity is, no doubt, the finest in the language. Considering the difficulties of a subject to which, short of inspiration, it is next to impossible to do any justice at all, it is very fine indeed. It is not all equal, however; there are in it stanzas which remind one that he was but twenty-one when he wrote it. Yet other stanzas are scarcely surpassed by anything he has written.
“Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb’d in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing
Mercy will sit between,