So, when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail--
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow-skirted fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid her babe to rest:
Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heaven's youngest-teemed star[131]
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed[132] angels sit, in order serviceable.[133]
If my reader should think some of the rhymes bad, and some of the words
oddly used, I would remind him that both pronunciations and meanings have
altered since: the probability is, that the older forms in both are the
better. Milton will not use a wrong word or a bad rhyme. With regard to
the form of the poem, let him observe the variety of length of line in
the stanza, and how skilfully the varied lines are associated--two of six
syllables and one of ten; then the same repeated; then one of eight and
one of twelve--no two, except of the shortest, coming together of the
same length. Its stanza is its own: I do not know another poem written in
the same; and its music is exquisite.
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