The probability is that, if the
reader note any fact in the poem, however trifling it might seem to the
careless eye, it will repay him by unfolding both individual and related
beauty. Then let him ponder the pictures given: the sudden arraying of
the shame-faced night in long beams; the amazed kings silent on their
thrones; the birds brooding on the sea: he will find many such. Let him
consider the clear-cut epithets, so full of meaning. A true poet may be
at once known by the justice and force of the adjectives he uses,
especially when he compounds them,--that is, makes one out of two. Here
are some examples: _meek-eyed Peace; pale-eyed priest; speckled vanity;
smouldering clouds; hideous hum; dismal dance; dusky eyne:_ there are
many such, each almost a poem in itself. The whole is a succession of
pictures set in the loveliest music for the utterance of grandest
thoughts.
No doubt there are in the poem instances of such faults in style as were
common in the age in which his verse was rooted: for my own part, I never
liked the first two stanzas of the hymn. But such instances are few;
while for a right feeling of the marvel of this poem and of the two
preceding it, we must remember that Milton was only twenty-one when he
wrote them.
Apparently to make one of a set with the _Nativity_, he began to write an
ode on the _Passion_, but, finding the subject "above the years he had
when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it
unfinished.
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