embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

NOTES.

ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.

From his sixteenth year Milton had been wont to write freely in Latin
verse, on miscellaneous poetic themes, sometimes expressing his thoughts
on events of the day, and sometimes addressing letters to his friends on
purely personal matters. From these Latin poems, which therefore in some
sense belong to English literature, we obtain valuable insight into his
course of life and his way of thinking. What Milton wrote in foreign
languages is indispensable for the information it gives us about
himself--its content is important; but as poetry implies a fusing of
content and form into an artistic unity, if one of these elements is
foreign, the result is nondescript and cannot be ranged under the head of
English literature in the strict sense of the term.

It is in one of Milton's own Latin pieces that we find our best
commentary on the Hymn on the Nativity. The sixth Latin Elegy is an
epistle to his intimate college friend, "Charles Diodati making a stay in
the country," the last twelve lines of which may be freely translated as
follows:--

But if you shall wish to know what I am doing,--if indeed you think it
worth your while to know whether I am doing anything at all,--we are
singing the peace-bringing king born of heavenly seed, and the happy ages
promised in the sacred books, and the crying of the infant God lying in a
manger under a poor roof, who dwells with his father in the realms above;
and the starry sky, and the squadrons singing on high, and the gods
suddenly driven away to their own fanes. Those gifts we have indeed given
to the birthday of Christ; that first light brought them to me at dawn.
Thee also they await sung to our native pipes; thou shalt be to me in
lieu of a judge for me to read them to.

This means, of course, that the poet is composing a Christmas Hymn in his
native language. We must note his age at this time,--twenty-one years: he
is a student at Cambridge. The poem remains the great Christmas hymn in
our literature. "The Ode on the Nativity," says Professor Saintsbury, "is
a test of the reader's power to appreciate poetry."

In four stanzas the poet speaks in his own person: he too must, with the
wise men from the east, bring such gifts as he has, to offer to the
Infant God. His offering is the _hu