Images of War and Peace in Milton's "Nativity Ode"
Alan D. Rosen
The theme and structure of the "Nativity Ode" may be viewed as presenting a single struggle whose victory is two-fold: the first is the victory of Christ and the re newal of mankind's "lost capacity for perfection"1 which occurs on the very morning of Christ's nativity; the second is the universal and eternal victory of truth, peace, justice, and mercy which is a direct result of the first victory and is hoped will take place on Judgment Day. The entire poem, in fact, may be seen as a celebration of the victory of peace on earth: not only the coming of this peace, but the manner of its coming, its nature and implications for man. It is a peace born of struggle. Poetically, Milton expresses his ideas of peace in contrast to, yet in harmony with, images of war and military action. Furthermore, he finds no contradiction in juxtaposing images of perfect peace and ultimate military might.
Although there have been various studies of this poem that work with its patterns of contrast (Barker's treatment of light and dark, harmony and discord; Woodhouse and later Stapleton's discussions of aesthetic center and intellectual core)2 there has been no clear recognition of the way the poem's imagery gives expression to Milton's concepts of war and peace or how the concepts in turn inform the imagery. I am suggesting in this essay that the design of the "Nativity Ode" is determined not only by contrasts of light and dark, harmony and discord, aesthetic center and intellectual core, but also by a subtle and pervasive counterpoint of the ideas of war and peace.
My discussion centers around three figures in the poem: the figure "Peace," the angelic choir, and the Christ child.
The descent of personified Peace from heaven in stanza iii introduces several facets of Milton's concept of peace.3 Her stated mission is to effect a kind of peace of mind for personified Nature by dispelling her fears of inferiority. But she is also Christ's harbinger and as such she strikes another kind of peace, a "universall Peace through Sea and Land." Milton makes this peace the topic of the next three stanzas, each stanza displaying one of peace's aspects: In the world of men (iv) "political peace" is established through the cessation of military battle; men and arms exist in a state of suspension as if hypnotized by the power of Peace's wand. In nature (v) agitated natural elements, not quite free from their original warring state in Chaos, are calmed into "nature-at-peace"; like a lover, wind kisses the waters and whispers
"new joyes" that charm the waves. In the heavens (vi), instead of freely radiating in all directions, the stars stand "fixt" gazing "one way" as if in a peaceful trance.
But these are all merely manifestations, for the ultimate source of Peace's magic is clearly the Christ.
In the chronology of the poem, the magic of Peace occurs before the infant's birth, but once the babe arrives on the scene, the personification is skillfully faded out and we find that the "Prince of light" has somehow both replaced and absorbed the figure of Peace that was in our minds. As Christ begins his "raign of peace" we care no more about what happened to Peace than we do about the disappearance of the capital p, for a differently conceptualized "peace" is now taking over: not a masque-like figure but a political, social, and spiritual reality.
The images of arrested motion introduced by Peace mark the transition in the poem from Peace to peace, from pre-Christian to Christian understanding. Though these images start out as the effects of Peace's magic wand, they become illustrations of the awe, astonishment, and enchantment of the universe that Christ's coming has inspired. These effects, which arise both in awe of Christ and by Peace as the agent of Christ, display the combination of power and beauty, struck only for the nativity here, which is Christ and which has come to live and work itself with us on earth.
Through these images we come to feel that peace means more than the cessation of war and the hanging up of shield and sword: it is a principle that reaches beyond the physical acts of mankind, a divine quality whose very harbinger can control the forces of wind, sea, and stars. We see here its power and glory; later we will examine its nature as it is to be worked with man. This initial moment involves the suspension of movement, the ordering of all energy into a state of calm; but it is only the pre cursor to that perpetual and timeless peace of Christ's reign. Peace personified has hushed and set the scene for the drama of man's attainment of the "perpetual peace"
which begins with Christ's birth. One might even say that it is here, in the trans formation of Peace to peace, that the miracle of the Incarnation happens.
With the introduction of the angelic host Milton begins to play the war theme in counterpoint to that of peace. The angels appear in three places and each appearance depicts their martial aspects: as a "host" or army, arranged in "squadrons" or ranked formation, keeping "watch" as well as watching (1.24)4; as "helmed" and "sworded" in
"glittering ranks" (112-14); and finally as "Bright-harnest" or brightly clad in mili tary equipment (244).5 The military depiction of the angelic host is of course tradi tional, but Milton's insistence on it in all three instances and the relation he brings it to bear on Christ as the bringer of peace is, so far as I know, unique.
In each successive use of the image of the angelic host Milton brings them physi cally closer to earth and to the nativity scene while bringing their martial role in closer conjunction with Christ as the symbol of peace. The first image, at line 21, refers to both stars and angels-seen-as-stars, a felicitous image that makes us see how small and far away the angels still are. The surrounding "Globe of circular light"
that they will become in line 110 is yet but a squadron of dots in distant space. The stage by stage arrival of the angels is the visual measurement of the time process of Christ's coming; it is the referent by which Milton structures instantaneous and sym-
bolic action narratively.
In their next appearance, near the poem's center, the angels are substantially closer, surrounding the shepherds' sight and overwhelmingly audible. Their military dress and order are even more conspicuous than in the proem, for now we can see details of their appearance: they wear helmets and swords and display their wings as soldiers display arms. The image of soldiers armed to the hilt yet harping the music of ultimate concord recalls stanza iv where the striking of universal peace meant that "spear and shield were high up hung" (1.55). The instruments of war were not destroyed but only their use suspended, for it is in their improper use—not in their mere existence—that war and the imperfection of nature for which war is a sign con tinue to plague the earth. The same arms are shown, in the image of the angels, to be not only compatible with but also complementary to the advent of our peace.
These angels are battle ready, disciplined in rank and order, equipped with a brilliant show of arms, and they are in no way incongruous with Milton's notion of peace in this poem. In fact, they serve and strengthen it as they watch over, surround, and protect its coming. As Milton's tone reveals, the military ranks, arms, and potential for war which these angels manifest are, in the coming of true peace, decorative, glori ous, and awe-inspiring.6
The closing lines of the poem show the angels, at last together with the babe, now so close that we are inside their circle watching the babe. Still in ranked formation for "order serviceable," they stay ready to serve and defend the babe's wellbeing.
The juxtaposition of sleeping child and attending warrior angels produces a kind of harmonious counterpoint of image and idea: The angels, for all their readiness, ex perience, and display of arms, do nothing in the poem except make music (and music is a sign for peace) and sit. The babe, on the other hand, in all his innocent infancy, clad only in "swadling bands," without helmet, sword, or harness, has by himself fought and won the great battle of the poem. The combined images make us feel, as B.
Rajan says, "the intense co-presence of power and fragility, the force of order and the calm of peace."7 In this final stanza we have a visual representation of how warfare and peace can exist harmoniously for the glory of God and man. Here Milton sounds and intermingles the contrasting motifs, resolving them in perfect harmony in the poem's final chord.
The various associations of the Christ child with Milton's conception of peace consti tute the melody to which the angels move in counterpoint. In contrast to the figure who "strikes a universall Peace" (1.52), the babe has come down to earth to "work us a perpetual peace" (1.7). "Perpetual" here means more than "eternal"; it suggests motion of some kind, a dynamic principle of continuing effectiveness—not a constant passivity but a constant process, a mechanism in motion. The adjective imparts a sense of life to the notion of peace. What Milton is describing is not the kind of peace one associates with death or motionlessness, but a state of calm and concordant
energy, an eternally functioning life principle, organic and active.
Moreover, Christ in this poem does not come down to earth merely to bestow peace on man. To do so would be to deny the dynamic aspect of peace and imply instead that its nature is inert, that it is an object to be given and taken away like some material possession. Christ comes rather to "work" us this peace. Not just a thing to be had, peace is to be worked for and worked at. It does not simply exist; it
"works," that is to say, acts, lives, and performs its beneficial service to man. In another sense, "work" suggests the act of creating, the practicing of an art.8 In the Defensio Secunda, among other places, Milton refers to peace as the "art of peace"; and here he conveys through the word "work" the same idea of fashioning, shaping, de veloping, and perfecting, as with any true art. Christ will, as man should, "work" or practice the "art of peace." He will work for us, and with us, and "work us" into that on-going state and process of life Milton called peace.
Though the babe is the worker of peace and the very symbol of peace, Milton also endows him with the contrasting quality of being a great warrior, making him a type of infant Hercules with the same aura of miraculous physical power.9 This is no mild and suffering Christ whose love defeats the enemy, but a strong and heroic Christ with a divine punch that crushes and binds the "serpent" in all his forms. Using intangible, indescribable weapons, Christ gains a victory over the pagan gods that is ap parently bloodless and effortless, accomplished not by physical but by spiritual strength.
Yet there are elements of that conflict which Milton figures forth as physical and mili tary, thus sustaining the conflation of perfect peace and ultimate war in one image.
In describing Milton's treatment of this conflict, Rosemond Tuve states: "The false gods are not fought with, nor even triumphantly unmasked and routed before the eyes of their worshippers; they simply are, in this new true Light, what they always have really been—non-deities. And of their own motion they flee; are not destroyed, simply lose their power to impose upon man's credulity—man changes through the Incar nation, not they."10 Not to quibble with Miss Tuve, to whose study we all owe so much, yet there seems to me something of the fleshly and military nature of warfare going on here directly between Christ and all that he represents and Satan and all who derive power and existence from him. These military elements operate on a meta phorical rather than literal level of understanding, but of course that is the only level on which events of this nature—of a purely spiritual reality—can be described. It is to be sure "of their own motion they flee," but so was it ever in moments of fiercest battle when soldiers turn and run. And it is not of their own volition: they run as a direct result of Christ's spiritual weapons aimed at them. The pagan gods, as Miss Tuve has pointed out, are "not even triumphantly unmasked and routed before the eyes of their worshippers," but they are, in a very real sense, "fought with." Though spiritual and rendered in poetry as metaphor, there is a direct and warlike confron tation between Christ and the enemy. Satan does not flee; he is physically "bound"
and his defeated tail is "foulded." This is brought about not by any act of his "own motion," but by the power of the Christ, acting with spiritual weapons directly upon what we see as the body and principle of Satan. The "parting Genius" of stanza xx does not choose to leave: he "is . . . sent" by force of the unimaginable weapons of Christ. Osiris "feels from Juda's Land" not shame of his own unworthiness and falseness but "The dredded Infants hand." Though the "Infants hand" is felt meta phorically, the image invites our understanding to operate in fleshly and military terms.
Milton gives us the physical blow; just how such a blow works in the realm of the spirit is unknown to us as it was to Milton. If we can have spiritual weapons, surely we can have spiritual "fighting." Milton gives us nearly two Books of it in Paradise Lost.
All this routing of the pagan gods gives way to the rising sun, the last exits of the false deities, and the turn of the poem's focus to the traditional nativity scene of mother and infant. A sense of closure, completeness, and balance fills this final stanza: All the false gods are scattered and scattering outward to various hidden and distant places while all divine beings have at last gathered in one place and are at rest. Almost as if the mother is aware of the babe's numerous single-handed battles against the pagan deities, we are told to "see the Virgin blest, / Hath laid her Babe to rest." This image of the babe recalls and amplifies the images of arrested motion that anticipated his coming, for just as Peace struck a universal calm over the world as a sign of the peace (Christ) that was to come, so this image of the babe himself now calm and in peaceful sleep (his spiritual weapons at rest) is a sign of that "full and perfect" peace that is analogously to come. We share in the infant's peace that comes at the completion of a great performance, for now we too can rest, assured that our perfect peace will also come. The sense of peace at the close is further re- enforced by the balance of war and peace images as angels and Christ are brought together for the first time in the poem. At the center of the scene is the Prince of light, source of peace, surrounded and protected by "squadrons bright" that are comple mentary lights of perfect military strength, order, and adoration. The peace Christ brings is mighty and glorious, as the co-presence of heaven's army signifies.
Finally, as Mr. Rajan writes, "All wars end when the ultimate war is won."11 But for the time being the ultimate war is only beginning. The poem leaves us at the very beginnings of a peace that will "slowly work" itself, through Christ, into ultimate peace after the Day of Judgment. The working of this peace is also the human battling for it, what Milton calls the "warfare of peace" in the Defensio Secunda. This warfare of the spirit which the image of the warrior angels suggests is, for Milton, an essential ingredient in the chemistry of making peace on earth. Christ has come to help us battle against and eventually defeat Satan in the human heart so that we may regain the innocence, the godliness, and the peace of triumph embodied in that sleeping babe.
Notes
XK. L. Stapleton, "Milton and the New Music," UTQ 23 (1953-54), reprinted in Milton: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Arthur E. Barker (New York, 1965), p.37.
2 Arthur E. Barker, "The Pattern of Milton's 'Nativity Ode/ " UTQ 10 (1940-41), reprinted in Milton: Modern Judgements, ed. A. Rudrum (London, 1968); A. S. P. Woodhouse, "Notes on Milton's Early Development," UTQ 13 (1943-44), pp. 66-101; K. L. Stapleton, op. cit.
3 For a fuller analysis of the figure Peace see Rosemond Tuve, Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 53-57.
4 For supportive evidence of my interpretation that Milton's image conveys both the idea of angelic host and a host of stars, see A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, Vol.
II, Part One, ed. A .S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush (London, 1972), pp. 66-67, n.21.
5 The Shorter O.E.D., 3rd ed., p.868.
6 Had he composed this poem around the time of the Defensio Secunda, in which he called the victories of peace far more honorable and glorious than those of war, Milton might have put less emphasis on the compatibility of arms with Christian peace. But as it was written in his early twenties, the glories of war as a way to lasting peace still seemed a valid subject for poetic cele bration.
7 B. Rajan, "In Order Serviceable," MLR 63 (1968), p.18.
8 See A Variorum Commentary, Vol. II, Part One, p. 64, n.7.
9 See Tuve, p. 71; and David Daiches, Milton (London, 1957), p. 47.
10 Tuve, p. 63.
11 Rajan, p. 21.
