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 unwound, The vaile of night, and gathered heaps of ground, The pow’rs of darkness scatter’d all around, Him, the perpetually bright fount, we crown.

Let us go forth, rejoicing on this day, In nature’s splendor, hymns of love convey.

• John Milton