Proud world, said I, cease your contest,
And let the mighty babe alone.
The phoenix builds the phoenix’ nest.
Love’s architecture is his own.
The babe whose birth embraves this morn,
Made his own bed ere he was born.

These lines come from Richard Crashaw’s devotional Christmas poetry, written in the milieu of seventeenth-century English metaphysical verse. Crashaw (c. 1612–1649), an Anglican-turned-Catholic poet associated with the “Caroline” religious writers, is known for highly wrought, baroque imagery and intense affective piety. The passage addresses the Nativity: the speaker rebukes worldly “pride” and power (“Proud world… cease your contest”) in the presence of the infant Christ. The poem’s conceits—especially the phoenix and “Love’s architecture”—reflect Crashaw’s characteristic blending of classical emblem, Christian typology, and paradox to magnify the mystery of the Incarnation and Christ’s self-humbling birth.

The stanza dramatizes a reversal of worldly values at Christmas. The “mighty babe” is paradoxically powerful in weakness: Christ enters history as an infant, yet his coming silences the world’s competitive striving. The phoenix image suggests self-generating life and resurrection: the child who will die and rise already contains, in divine foreknowledge and purpose, the pattern of his own saving work. “Love’s architecture is his own” presents the Incarnation as a design authored by divine love rather than human ambition. The final couplet intensifies the paradox: the child “made his own bed ere he was born,” implying providence and voluntary self-emptying—Christ prepares the conditions of his humility and sacrifice before entering them.