That Day Again

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.

--John Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

For another post about this poem, go here.

Afterthought: In his great Milton collection, Merritt Y. Hughes says that "the theme of the Ode--the triumph olf the infant Christ over the gods of paganism--was dear to Christian humanists, Protestant and Catholic alike." Hughes, John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose 42 (1957). Quite right, and a question that may be more obvious to us now than it was to Hughes is: how come to Christianity didn't get swamped by the paganism?