The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be? My God, no hymn for thee? My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds Of thoughts and words and deeds. The pasture is Thy word, the streams Thy grace, Enriching every place. Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers Outsing the daylight hours. Then we will chide the sun for letting night Take up his place and right: We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should Himself the candle hold. I will go searching till I find a sun Shall stay till we have done; A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly As frost-nipt suns look sadly. Then we will sing and shine all our own day, And one another pay. His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine, Till ev’n His beams sing and my music shine. GEORGE HERBERT 40. ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST’S NATIVITY This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of heaven’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 heaven’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, heavenly 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 heaven, 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. THE HYMN It was the winter wild, While the heaven-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.