“And with officious joy the scene attend!”

In February 1743, the Gentlemen’s Magazine published this religious poem:

ON CHRISTMAS-DAY.

ASSist me, muse divine! to sing the morn,
On which the saviour of mankind was born;
But oh! what numbers to the theme can rise?
Unless kind Angels aid me from the skies!
Methinks, I see the tuneful host descend,
And with officious joy the scene attend!
Hark, by their hymns directed on the road
The gladsome shepherds find the nascent god!
And view the infant conscious of his birth,
Smiling, bespeak salvation to the earth!

For when th’ important Aera first drew near
In which the great Messiah should appear;
And to accomplish his redeeming love,
Resign awhile his glorious throne above;
Beneath our form should every woe sustain,
And by triumphant suffering fix his reign!
Should for lost man in tortures yield his breath,
Dying, to save us from eternal death!
Oh mystick Union!—salutary grace!
Incarnate God our nature should embrace!
That deity should stoop to our disguise,
That man recover’d should regain the skies!
Dejected Adam! from thy grave ascend,
And view the serpent’s deadly malice end,
Adoring bless th’ Almighty’s boundless grace
That gave his son a ransom for thy race!
Oh never let my soul this day forget,
But pay in grateful praise her annual debt
To him, whom ’tis my trust, I shall adore,
When time, and sin, and death, shall be no more!

Those lines were credited to “Orinthia.” That pen name reappeared four years later in the collection Orinthia’s Miscellanies, credited to “Elizabeth Teft of Lincoln,” born in 1723. At least one poem from that volume had previously appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine, and there are stylistic similarities between Test’s work and this Christmas hymn. She’s probably the author, even if she didn’t include it in her collection.

TOMORROW: Across the Atlantic.