houghted cares" of mere bodily and temporal life, and
habitually aspires to live the life of the mind and the spirit,

"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call Earth."

So here at once, in his first important poem, what in other hands might
have been a mere telling of the old human and earthly story of the
first Christmas night becomes in Milton's a vision of all time and all
space, with heaven in it, and the stars, and the music of the spheres,
and the great timeless scheme of redemption with which he was to have
so much to do later, with history, too, and literature, the false gods
of the Old Testament and of the Greek and Roman classics already {101}
anticipating the parts they were to play in _Paradise Lost_.

And note one other thing. Milton is only twenty-one, but he is already
an incomparable artist. The stanza had been so far the usual form for
lyrics, and he adopts it here for the first and last time. But if he
accepts the instrument prescribed by tradition, with what a master's
hand this wonderful boy of twenty-one touches it, and to what
astonishing music! It seems that the stanza itself is his own. Every
one has felt the combination in it, as he manages it, of the romantic
movement and suggestion which he loved and renounced with the classical
strength which is the chief element in the final impression he made on
English poetry. As yet the romantic quality is the stronger, and even
one of the mighty closing Alexandrines is dedicated to the lovely
Elizabethan fancy of the "yellow skirted fayes" who

"Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze."

How such a line as that, or still more plainly the two which end the
most romantic stanza of all--

"No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell"
{102} found a rejoicing echo in Keats is obvious. This, of course, has
often been noticed. But has it ever been remarked that there are also
lines in the poem which might have been written by another
nineteenth-century poet of equal but very different genius?

"The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean;"--

should we be surprised to come upon these elemental loves and joys
heralding a new reign of justice and peace in the _Prometheus Unbound_?

But neither Keats nor Shelley, who both had their affinities to Milton,
had it in him to reach the concentrated Mi