IL PENSEROSO.

And the mute Silence hist along,

'Less Philomel will deign a song, HENCE, vain deluding joys,

In her sweetest, saddest plight, The brood of Folly without father bred !

Smoothing the rugged brow of night, How little you bestad,

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!

Gently o'er the accustomed oak, Dwell in some idle brain,

Sweet bird, that shunnest the noise of folly, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess

Most musical, most melancholy! As thick and numberless

Thee, chantress, oft, the woods among, As the gay motes that people the sunbeams;

I woo, to hear thy even-song; Or likest hovering dreams,

And, missing thee, I walk unseen The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

On the dry smooth-shaven green, But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy,

To behold the wandering moon, Hail, divinest Melancholy !

Riding near her highest noon, Whose saintly visage is too bright

Like one that had been led astray To hit the sense of human sight,

Through the Heaven's wide pathless way; And therefore to our weaker view

And oft, as if her head she bowed, O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue;

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. Black, but such as in esteem

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,

I hear the far-off curfew sound, Or that starred Ethiop queen* that strove

Over some wide-watered shore, To set her beauty's praise above

Swinging slow with sullen roar: The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended:

Or, if the air will not permit, Yet thou art higher far descended:

Some still removed place will fit, The bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,

Where glowing embers through the room To solitary Saturn bore ;

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; His daughter she; (in Saturn's reign,

Far from all resort of mirth, Such mixture was not held a stain ;)

Save the cricket on the hearth, Oft in glimmering bowers and glades

Or the belman's drowsy charm, He met her, and in secret shades

To bless the doors from nightly harm. Of woody Ida's inmost grove,

Or let my lamp at midnight hour, Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove.

Be seen in some high lonely tower, Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,

Where I might oft outwatch the Bear, Sober, steadfast, and demure,

With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere All in a robe of darkest grain,

The spirit of Plato, to unfold Flowing, with majestic train,

What worlds or what vast regions hold And sable stole of Cyprus lawn,

The immortal mind, that hath forsook Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

Her mansion in this fleshy nook: Come, but keep thy wonted state,

And of those demons that are found With even step and musing gait,

In fire, air, flood, or under ground, And looks commercing with the skies,

Whose power hath a true consent Thy wrapt soul sitting in thine eyes;

With planet, or with element. There, held in holy passion still,

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy Forget thyself to marble, till

In sceptered pall come sweeping by, With a sad leaden downward cast

Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, Thou fix them on the earth as fast :

Or the tale of Troy divine; And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,

Or what (though rare) of latter age Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,

Ennobled hath the buskined stage. And hears the Muses in a ring

But, O sad Virgin, that thy power Aye round about Jove's altar sing:

Might raise Musæus from his bower! And add to these retired Leisure,

Or bid the souls of Orpheus sing That in trim gardens takes his pleasure:

Such notes, as, warbled to the string, But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, Him that yon soars on golden wing,

And made hell grant what love did seek ! Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,

Or call up him that left half-told The cherub Contemplation:

The story of Cambuscan bold, “That starred Ethiop queen”_Casiope, wife of Of Camball, and of Algarsife, Cepheus

And who had Canace to wife,

a

a

III. SONG

And lead ye where ye may more near behold
What shallow searching fame hath left untold;

Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone,

By sandy Ladon's lilied banks: Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon:

On old Lycæus, or Cyllene hoar, For know, by lot from Jove, I am the power

Trip no more in twilight ranks; Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower,

Though Erymanth your loss deplore,
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove

A better soil shall give ye thanks.
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove. From the stony Mænalus
And all my plants I save from nightly ill

Bring your flocks, and live with us;
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill: Here ye shall have greater grace,
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew,

To serve the lady of this place. And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,

Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were, Or what the cross dire looking planet smites,

Yet Syrinx well might wait on her. Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites.

Such a rural queen
When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round

All Arcadia hath not seen.
Over the mount, and all this hallowed ground;
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasseled horn

LYCIDAS.
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout In this mopody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortu-
With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless. nately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish
But else in deep of night, when drowsiness

seas, 1637, and by occasion foretells the ruin of our cor

rupted clergy, then in their height. Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Syren's harmony,

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, And sing to those that hold the vital shears. I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And turn the adamantine spindle round, And, with forced fingers rude, On which the fate of gods and men is wound. Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year: Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, To lull the daughters of Necessity,

Compels me to disturb your season due: And keep unsteady Nature to her law,

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, And the low world in measured motion draw Young Lycidas, and has not left his peer: After the heavenly tune, which none can hear Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear:

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. And yet such music worthiest were to blaze He must not float upon his watery bier The peerless height of her immortal praise, Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit, Without the meed of some melodious tear. If my inferior hand or voice could hit

Begin then, sisters of the sacred well, Inimitable sounds : yet, as we go,

That from beneath the seat of jove doth spring;
Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show, Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
I will assay, her worth to celebra

Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse
And so attend ye toward her glittering state; So may some gentle Muse*
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem, With lucky words favour my destined urn;
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem. And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, O'er the smooth enameled green,

Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. Where no print of step hath been

Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Follow me, as I sing

Under the opening eyelids of the morn, And touch the warbled string,

We drove afield, and both together heard Under the shady roof

What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Of branching elm star-proof.

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Follow me:

Oft till the star that rose at evening bright, I will bring you where she sits,

Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westerClarl in splendour as befits,

Her deity. Such a rural queen

• “ So may some gentle Muse"-Muse in the masculino All Arcadia hath not seen.

II. SONG.

ing wheel.

a

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, And listens to the herald of the sea*
Tempered to the oaten flute;

That came in Neptune's plea:
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
From the glad sound would not be absent long; What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain:
And old Damotas loved to hear our song. And questioned every gust of rugged wings,
But, О the heavy change, now thou art gone,

That blows from off each beaked promontory: Now thou art gone, and never must return! They know not of his story; Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves And sage Hippotades their answer brings, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed: And all their echoes mourn:

The air was calm, and on the level brine The willows, and the hazel copses green,

Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. Shall now no more be seen

It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays, Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, As killing as the canker to the rose,

That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear, His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, When first the whitethorn blows;

Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with wo. Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless ' Ah! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?' deep

Last came, and last did go,
Closed over the head of your loved Lycidas? The pilot of the Galilean lake;
For neither were ye playing on the steep, Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids lie, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,)
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake: Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream: “ How well could I have spared for thee, young Ah me! I fondly dream!

swain, Had ye been there—for what could that have done? Enow of such as for their bellies' sake What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold? The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, Of other care they little reckoning make, Whom universal nature did lament,

Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast, When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, And shove away the worthy bidden guest : His gory visage down the stream was sent, Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ?

to hold Alas! what boots it with incessant care A sheephook, or have learned aught else the least To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs! And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? What recks it them? What need they? They are Were it not better done, as others use,

sped; To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair ?

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, (That last infirmity of noble mind)

But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they To scorn delights, and live laborious days:

draw, But the fair guerdon, when we hope to find, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, Daily devours apace, and nothing said: And slits the thin-spun life. “But not the praise,” But that two-handed enginet at the door, Phæbus replied, and touched my trembling ears: Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." “Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past, Nor in the glistering foil

That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies: And call the vales, and bid them hither cast But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, Their bells, and flow'reis of a thousand hues. And perfect witness of all judging Jove; Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.” On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes, Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal That on the green turf suck the honied shower,

reeds! That strain I heard was of a higher mood:

• "The herald of the sea."-Trilon. But now my oat proceeds,

"Two-handed engine."—the are of reformation.

1

And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, That sing, and, singing, in their glory move,
The tufted crowtoe, and pale jessamine, And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
The glowing violet,

Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
The muskrose, and the well attired woodbine, In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, To all that wander in that perilous flood.
And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

rills,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies. He touched the tender stops of various quills,
For, so to interpose a little ease,

With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
Ah me? Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas And now was dropt into the western bay:
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled, At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied

ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CON-
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, *

SCIENCE UNDER THE LONG PAR.
Where the great vision of the guarded mount

LIAMENT.
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth: Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth. And with stiff' vows renounced his liturgy,

Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more, To seize the widowed whore Plurality
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,

From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred;
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; Dare ye for this abjure the civil sword
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And ride us with a classic hierarchy
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rotherford ?
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,
Through the dear might of him that walk'd the Must now be named and printed heretics

By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call : Where, other groves and other streams along, But we do hope to find out all your tricks, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,

Your plots and packing worse than those of And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,

Trent. In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love,

That so the parliament There entertain him all the saints above, May with their wholesome and preventive shears,

Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears, * “ The fable of Bellerus old,” &c. The Bellerian pro

And succour our just fears montory or Land's end in Cornwall, near which is Mount Sc. Michael, a fortress on a rock, named from a supposed visiou When they shall read this clearly in your charge, or apparition of St. Michael

New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.

waves;