Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity - J. Milton

62 Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity
The first poem of Book Second.
The sixty-second poem in the collection. (* additional details below; after my initial, un-schooled, interpretation)

NOTES FROM THE BACK OF THE BOOK:

whist: hushed; Pan: used here for the Lord of all; Lars and Lemures: household Gods and spirits of relations dead; Flamens: Roman priests; That twice-batter'd god: Dagon.

Osiris, the Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed after death in a sacred chest. This myth, reproduced in Syria and Greece in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, represents the annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter darkness. Horus, the son of Osiris, as the New Year, in his turn overcomes Typho.—It suited the genius of Milton's time to regard this primeval poetry and philosophy of the seasons, which has a further reference to the contest of Good and Evil in Creation, as a malignant idolatry. Shelley's Chorus in Hellas, "Worlds on worlds," treats the subject in a larger and sweeter spirit.

unshower'd: as watered by the Nile only.