The Turn of the Tide

Breathless was the air over Bethlehem; black and bare
The fields; hard as granite were the clods;
Hedges stiff with ice; the sedge, in the vice
Of the ponds, like little iron rods.
The deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem; it was shed
Wider each moment on the land;
Through rampart and wall into camp and into hall
Stole the hush. All tongues were at a stand.
Travellers at their beer in taverns turned to hear
The landlord—that oracle was dumb;
At the Procurator’s feast a jocular freedman ceased
His story, and gaped; all were glum.
Then the silence flowed forth to the islands and the north
And it smoothed the unquiet river-bars,
And leveled out the waves from their revelling, and paved
The sea with the cold, reflected stars.
Where the Cæsar sat and signed at ease on Palatine,
Without anger, the signatures of death,
There stole into his room and on his soul a gloom,
Till he paused in his work and held his breath.
Then to Carthage and the Gauls, to Parthia and the Falls
Of Nile, to Mount Amara it crept;
The romp and rage of beasts in swamp and forest ceased,
The jungle grew still as if it slept.
So it ran about the girth of the planet. From the Earth
The signal, the warning, went out,
Away beyond the air; her neighbours were aware
Of change, they were troubled with doubt.

Salamanders in the Sun who brandish as they run
Tails like the Americas in size,
Were stunned by it and dazed; wondering, they gazed
Up at Earth, misgiving in their eyes.
In Houses and Signs the Ousiarchs divine
Grew pale and questioned what it meant;
Great Galactic lords stood back to back with swords
Half-drawn, awaiting the event,
And a whisper among them passed, “Is this perhaps the last
Of our story and the glories of our crown?—
The entropy worked out?—the central redoubt
Abandoned?—The world-spring running down?”
Then they could speak no more. Weakness overbore
Even them; they were as flies in a web,
In lethargy stone-dumb. The death had almost come,
And the tide lay motionless at ebb.

Like a stab at that moment over Crab and Bowman,
Over Maiden and Lion, came the shock
Of returning life, the start, and burning pang at heart,
Setting galaxies to tingle and rock.
The Lords dared to breathe, swords went into sheathes
A rustling, a relaxing began;
With rumour and noise of the resuming of joys
Along the nerves of the universe it ran.
Then, pulsing into space with delicate dulcet pace,
Came a music infinitely small,
But clear; and it swelled and drew nearer, till it held
All worlds with the sharpness of its call,
And now divinely deep, ever louder, with a leap
And quiver of inebriating sound,
The vibrant dithyramb shook Libra and the Ram,
The brains of Aquarius spun round—
Such a note as neither Throne nor Potentate had known
Since the Word created the abyss.
But this time it was changed in a mystery, estranged,
A paradox, an ambiguous bliss.

Heaven danced to it and burned; such answer was returned
To the hush, the Favete, the fear
That Earth had sent out. Revel, mirth and shout
Descended to her, sphere below sphere,
Till Saturn laughed and lost his latter age’s frost
And his beard, Niagara-like, unfroze;
The monsters in the Sun rejoiced; the Inconstant One,
The unwedded Moon, forgot her woes;
A shiver of re-birth and deliverance round the Earth
Went gliding; her bonds were released;
Into broken light the breeze once more awoke the seas,
In the forest it wakened every beast;
Capripods fell to dance from Taproban to France,
Leprechauns from Down to Labrador;
In his green Asian dell the Phoenix from his shell
Burst forth and was the Phoenix once more.

So Death lay in arrest. But at Bethlehem the bless’d
Nothing greater could be heard
Than sighing wind in the thorn, the cry of One new-born,
And cattle in stable as they stirred.

C.S. Lewis (1948)

This poem is apparently a response to John Milton’s Christmas ode……

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity

BY JOHN MILTON

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 peace.

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,

And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,

Wherewith he wont at Heav’n’s high council-table,

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside, and here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say Heav’nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

Afford a present to the Infant God?

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,

To welcome him to this his new abode,

Now while the heav’n, by the Sun’s team untrod,

Hath took no print of the approaching light,

And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

See how from far upon the eastern road

The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:

O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,

And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;

Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,

And join thy voice unto the angel quire,

From out his secret altar touch’d with hallow’d fire.

It was the winter wild,

While the Heav’n-born child,

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;

Nature in awe to him

Had doff’d her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize:

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.

Only with speeches fair

She woos the gentle air

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,

And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden white to throw,

Confounded, that her Maker’s eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

But he, her fears to cease,

Sent down the meek-ey’d Peace:

She, crown’d with olive green, came softly sliding

Down through the turning sphere,

His ready harbinger,

With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;

And waving wide her myrtle wand,

She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

No war or battle’s sound

Was heard the world around;

The idle spear and shield were high uphung;

The hooked chariot stood

Unstain’d with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;

And kings sate still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

But peaceful was the night

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began:

The winds with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kist,

Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

The Stars with deep amaze

Stand fix’d in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence;

And will not take their flight,

For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer that often warn’d them thence,

But in their glimmering orbs did glow,

Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

And though the shady gloom

Had given day her room,

The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed,

And hid his head for shame,

As his inferior flame

The new-enlighten’d world no more should need:

He saw a greater Sun appear

Than his bright throne or burning axle-tree could bear.

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or ere the point of dawn,

Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they than

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below:

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep;

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook,

Divinely warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took:

The air such pleasure loth to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heav’nly close.

Nature, that heard such sound

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia’s seat, the Airy region thrilling,

Now was almost won

To think her part was done,

And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:

She knew such harmony alone

Could hold all heav’n and earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light,

That with long beams the shame-fac’d Night array’d;

The helmed Cherubim

And sworded Seraphim

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display’d,

Harping in loud and solemn quire,

With unexpressive notes to Heav’n’s new-born Heir.

Such music (as ’tis said)

Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of morning sung,

While the Creator great

His constellations set,

And the well-balanc’d world on hinges hung,

And cast the dark foundations deep,

And bid the welt’ring waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out ye crystal spheres!

Once bless our human ears

(If ye have power to touch our senses so)

And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time,

And let the bass of Heav’n’s deep organ blow;

And with your ninefold harmony

Make up full consort to th’angelic symphony.

For if such holy song

Enwrap our fancy long,

Time will run back and fetch the age of gold,

And speckl’d Vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould;

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,

Orb’d in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,

Mercy will sit between,

Thron’d in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissu’d clouds down steering;

And Heav’n, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

But wisest Fate says no:

This must not yet be so;

The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy,

That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss,

So both himself and us to glorify:

Yet first to those ychain’d 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 smould’ring clouds outbrake:

The aged Earth, aghast

With terror of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the centre shake,

When at the world’s last session,

The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for from this happy day

Th’old Dragon under ground,

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway,

And, wrath to see his kingdom fail,

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

The Oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-ey’d priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o’er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;

From haunted spring, and dale

Edg’d with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;

With flow’r-inwoven tresses torn

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Ba{:a}lim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-batter’d god of Palestine;

And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heav’n’s queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine;

The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn;

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue:

In vain with cymbals’ ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue.

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshower’d grass with lowings loud;

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud:

In vain with timbrel’d anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp’d ark.

He feels from Juda’s land

The dreaded Infant’s hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;

Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.

So when the Sun in bed,

Curtain’d with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale

Troop to th’infernal jail,

Each fetter’d ghost slips to his several grave,

And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-lov’d maze.

But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest:

Time is our tedious song should here have ending.

Heav’n’s youngest-teemed star,

Hath fix’d her polish’d car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;

And all about the courtly stable,

Bright-harness’d Angels sit in order serviceable.