Note: Today our poetry consultant, Evan Craig Reardon, offers thoughts on John Milton’s poem:
John Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” is one of his earliest extant poems, written probably in 1629 when Milton was 21 years old. He was already quite mature poetically and the poem displays many of the features common to his work, such as a deep knowledge of the classics and a conscious attempt to work in the classical tradition; a concern for the theological and philosophical, in not just theme but also language and ideas; and an ornate, highly developed poetic style with multivalent word choices and long, searching lines. All of these aspects, however, are secondary to the deep spirituality and adoration of God that supports and animates all of his writings.
This spirituality is plain in this poem. There are many points of entry into all of Milton’s poetry, but in this poem his concern with exploring the Incarnation, in all of its terrestrial, temporal, and cosmic implications. The poem itself is deeply incarnational: beginning with the very first line we, the readers, are manifested into both the poem and the event of the incarnation that is propelling the poem’s narrative. The poem begins “This is the month, and this the happy morn,” and with that “this” we are interpolated through space and time into a specific time and place—this month, this morning. We are manifested into a text that is reveling in the awful mystery that God was made man among us in the form of the Infant Jesus.
Throughout the poem everything is focused on the Incarnation, what it means for nature, history, society, and the cosmos. For Milton, the singular act of God entering the world in the form of a child has repercussions through all of creation, with lines leading out from the birth of Jesus.
This Christmas, I invite you to spend a moment with Milton and his thinking poetically through this cosmic event. Follow the Incarnation throughout the poem, asking yourself, what am I seeing? Experiencing? And what are the implications for me, now? For Milton, the entry of Jesus into the world was not an event locked in the past because “This is the month, and this the happy morn,” this, now is the morning of Christ’s nativity.
Illustrations: top, “The Descent of Peace,” bottom, The Annunciation to the Shepherds, by William Blake. Click HERE to see all of Blake’s illustrations for Milton’s poem.
Please join us at the Cathedral on January 29 for a meditative reading of W.H. Auden’s, “New Year Letter,” by clicking HERE.
Interested in reading “Paradise Regained?” by John Milton? Send us an email to help us plan our next workshop/s.
From all of us who work with the Cathedral Arts mission, we wish you a blessed Christmas!
