Steve Schwartz wrote:

>Milton's "Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity" tended to go right by
>me, until I heard Vaughan Williams's setting.  The poem became for me less
>of a "document" and more rapturous.  VW's music also highlighted the poet's
>craft with rhythm and rhyme.  In short, the music opened up the poem to me
>as something alive rather than something to be studied.

Milton's "The Morning Star" was similarly rehabilitated for me by Britten's
setting in the Spring Symphony.  In fact Britten brings life and vitality
to all the diverse poems in that work, especially (and amazingly) the
turgid "London, to thee I do present the merry month of May" by that
justly-neglected duo, Beaumont and Fletcher.

Alan Moss