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Although the ode was the first poem of Milton's 1645 collection, it was not the first poem that he wrote; many of the Latin and Greek poems included in the 1645 collection were composed during an earlier time. According to Thomas Corns, "Quite probably, its location indicates the poet's assessment of
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The poem deals with both the
Nativity and the Incarnation of Christ and Milton believed that the two were connected. The Nativity and the Crucifixion represent Christ's purpose as Christ in Milton's poetry, and contemporary poem, because Christ becomes human-like in the Nativity to redeem fallen man
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The hymnal stanzas are eight lines each, uniformly written in iambic meter. As in the introductory stanzas, the final two lines form a rhyming couplet, with a line in tetrameter followed by a line in hexameter, which closes out each stanza. The first six lines are made up of two tercets organized by
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This is the month, and this the happy morn / Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King, / Of wedded maid, and virgin mother born, / Our great redemption from above did bring; / For so the holy sages once did sing, / That he our deadly forfeit should release, / And with his Father work us a perpetual
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form a set of poems that celebrate important
Christian events: Christ's birth, the feast of the Circumcision, and Good Friday. The topic of these poems places them within a genre of Christian literature popular during the 17th century and places Milton alongside of poets like
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It was the winter wild, / While the Heav'n-born-child, / All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; / Nature in awe to him / had doffed her gaudy trim / With her great master so to sympathize: / It was no season then for her / To wanton with the sun her lusty
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and humanity is redeemed when Christ sacrifices himself during the
Crucifixion. Milton's reliance on the connection is traditional, and Milton further connects the Nativity with the creation of the world, a theme that is expanded upon later in Book VII of
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Milton's introductory stanzas are seven lines each: five lines of iambic pentameter, using the rhyme scheme ABABB, followed by a rhyming couplet. The final line of each stanza is written in iambic hexameter. For example, see the first
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173:." He further claims that the ode "rises in many ways above the rather commonplace achievements of Milton's other devotional poems and stands out from the mass of other early Stuart poems about Christmas."
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The ode has, according to Thomas Corns, "generally been recognized as Milton's first manifestation of poetic genius and, qualitatively, a poem to be set alongside '
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149:. Like the other two poems of the set and like other poems at the time, the ode describes a narrator within the poem and experiencing the Nativity.
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the rhyme scheme AABCCB. The first two lines of each tercet are in trimeter, and the third in pentameter. For example, the first stanza of the Hymn:
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The poem is divided into two sections. "The Hymn," which comprises the bulk of the poem (27 stanzas) is prefaced by a four stanza introduction.
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Corns, Thomas. "'On the
Morning of Christ's Nativity', 'Upon the Circumcision' and 'The Passion'" in
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in
December 1629, after celebrating reaching the age of maturity in England, in commemoration of the
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in the second movement - "Ring Out! Ye
Crystal Spheres" - of his 1990 work "Canticum Novum".
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and his overthrow of earthly and pagan powers. The poem also connects the
Incarnation with
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William Blake's illustrations of On the
Morning of Christ's Nativity
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Stanza XIII of the Hymn portion of this poem was set by
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its quality"; this consideration is significant because
304:. Ed. Thomas Corns. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
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and anti-Church of
England based religious beliefs.
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41:in 1629 and published in his
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343:public domain audiobook at
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649:A Treatise of Civil Power
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757:Edward Phillips (nephew)
558:Of Prelatical Episcopacy
251:Shawcross 1993 pp. 43–44
44:Poems of Mr. John Milton
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197:' Christmas cantata,
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177:In music
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