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The Blessed Birth-day

celebrated in some religious meditations on the Angels Anthem. Lvc. 2. 14. Also holy transportations, in contemplating some of the most obserueable adiuncts about our Saviours Nativity. Extracted for the most part out of the Sacred Scriptures, Ancient Fathers, Christian Poets. And some moderne Approved Authors. By Charles Fitz-Geffry. The second Edition with Additions

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Astronomers of the Zodiack cease to talk,
And the twelue signes, through which the Sun doth walk.
Say what you will, you cannot well avow,
The Sunne in Virgo truely was till now:

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You never did untill this day espie
Heaven low as Earth, & Earth as Heaven made high.
You never saw what now you see is done,
A pregnant Moone, a sublunary Sunne.
In all your houses such a match was never,
Heaven comes and woes, and weddeth earth for ever,
Now may you finde that motto much mistakes
Which oft hath frontispiz'd your Almanacks,
A wise man ruler o're the stars shall be:
The Wise-men now ruld by a starre we see,
Who from the rising of the Sunne are prest
To see tho Sunne arising in the west.
O you whose triple office is to know
The stars, the power of hearbs and plants to show,
T'attend according to your country guise,
The service of your fained Deities:
Come see a starre on earth, more bright more cleare,
Then ere did any in the skie appeare:
Come see a plant beginning now to flourish:
Whose powre and vertue Heaven & Earth doth nourish
Here in a narrow manger you may view
That Deity which yet you never knew.
Come noble Persians, now learne to adore,
A greater Sunne then that you did before:
A Sunne which th'other made, and to him lends
That light which he vnto the world extends:
A Sunne which once commanded yours to stay
His restlesse course, and to produce the day:
And at an other time enforc'd his shade,

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To turne full tenne degrees quite retrograde:
And who shall shortly so ecclipse his light,
That all the world at noone should put on night:
When Earths vast globe in sable darknesse shall
Attend as mourner at his funerall.
Then shall the learned Areopagite
Cry out astonisht at the vncouth sight,
Either the God of Nature suffers wrong,
Or the worlds frame shall be dissolu'd ere long.
Boue all your Starres, adore this rising Sunne,
And if the spheares make musique as they runne,
Be sure no better straine then this can be
The sweet Faburthen, to their melodie:
Glory to God on high, on earth be peace,
And let good will t'wards Christians never cease.