WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: Nativity Ode, part 4

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Today, we continue exploring Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." In this excerpt, we see that the joy of the Nativity sparks a longing and a hope for an Edenic golden age. However, the poet reminds us that all things must be harrowed before they can be remade.

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're continuing our journey through On the Morning of Christ's Nativity by John Milton. In today's excerpt, Milton begins by entreating the heavens to continue ringing out their music of praise for the Christ Child. He speculates that if this music continues to enrap man's fancy or imagination, it will be as if time itself turns backward to bring back an Edenic golden age. This language is another reference to Virgil's fourth Eclog, which also describes a golden age brought about by the Messiah. He envisions an end to vanity and sin and yearns for the return

of truth, justice, and mercy. The poet longs for the world before the fall. However, Milton tells us that wisest fate says no to this vision. As a wise professor once told me, you don't want to go back to the way things were before they went bad, because they'll just go bad again. Instead, Christ intends to do something new, to suffer and die for the redemption of man. As the poet begins to describe this,

there is a jarring shift to doomsday imagery, which evokes mighty terror rather than paradisiical tranquility. The shift, however, is necessary. The world must be harrowed before it can be remade. With all that said, let's dive in. On the morning of Christ's nativity by John Milton. Ring out, ye crystal spheres. Once bless our human ears, if ye have the power to touch our senses so.

And let your silver chime move in melodious time, and let the base of heaven's deep organ blow. And with your ninefold harmony, make up full consort to the angelic symphony. For if such holy song in wrap our fancy long, time will run back and fetch the age of gold, and speckled vanity will sicken soon and die, and leprous sin will melt from earthly mold,

and hell itself will pass away and leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. Yea, truth and justice then, will down return to men, orbed in a rainbow, and like glory's wearing, mercy will sit between, throned in celestial sheen, with radiant feet the tissueed clouds down steering, and heaven, as at some festival,

will open wide the gates of her high palace hall. But wisest faith says no. This must not yet be so. The babe lies yet in so. smiling infancy, that on the bitter cross must redeem our loss. So both himself and us to glorify. Yet first to those it chained in sleep, the wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep. With such a horrid clang as on Mount Sinai rang, while the red fire and smoldering clouds outbreak. The aged earth aghast, with terror of that blast, shall from the surface to the center's

shake. When at the world's last session, the dreadful judge in middle air shall spread his throne. You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. If you enjoyed this episode, consider following the Poetry Fix on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. And if you have any poems you want to see in a future episode, email your suggestions to the poetry fix at gmail.com. Join me next week and we'll be reading The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.