m as a friend who
can be pleased with trifles--almost, in fact, as a glorious playmate.
Such a nature has no intense feeling of sin, but can ask for forgiveness
and then forget; religion for it is rather an outward ritual to be duly
and gracefully performed than an inward transforming power. Herrick is a
strange exception among the Anglican singers of Christmas.

Milton's great Nativity hymn, with its wondrous blending of pastoral
simplicity and classical conceits, is too familiar for quotation here; it
may be suggested, however, that this work of the poet's youth is far more
Anglican than Puritan in its spirit.

Sweet and solemn Spenserian echoes are these verses from Giles Fletcher's
"Christ's Victory in Heaven":-- |83|

"Who can forget--never to be forgot--
The time, that all the world in slumber lies,
When, like the stars, the singing angels shot
To earth, and heaven awaked all his eyes
To see another sun at midnight rise
On earth? Was never sight of pareil fame,
For God before man like Himself did frame,
But God Himself now like a mortal man became.

A Child He was, and had not learnt to speak,
That with His word the world before did make;
His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak,
That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake,
See how small room my infant Lord doth take,
Whom all the world is not enough to hold!
Who of His years, or of His age hath told?
Never such age so young, never a child so old."{43}

The old lullaby tradition is continued by Wither, though the infant in
the cradle is an ordinary human child, who is rocked to sleep with the
story of his Lord:--

"A little Infant once was He,
And strength in weakness then was laid
Upon His virgin-mother's knee,
That power to thee might be conveyed.
Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

* * * * *

Within a manger lodged thy Lord,
Where oxen lay and asses fed;
Warm rooms we do to thee afford,
An easy cradle or a bed.
Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep."{44}

When we come to the eighteenth century we find, where we might least
expect it, among the moral verses of Dr. Watts, a charming cradle-song
conceived in just the same way:-- |84|

"Hush, my dear, lie still and slu