His rocks in nakedness arise;

His desolations mock the skies.
Sweet vale, Goldau, farewell!

An Alpine monument may dwell
Upon thy bosom, O my home!

The mountain-thy pall and thy prison-may keep thee;
I shall see thee no more; but till death I will weep thee;
Of thy blue dwelling dream wherever I roam,
And wish myself wrapped in its peaceful foam.

LESSON CLVIII.

Lycidas.-MILTON.

In this monody, the author bewails a learned friend, who, on his passage from Chester to Ireland, was drowned in the Irish seas, 1637.]

YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude:
And, with forced fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due ;
For Lycidas is dead,-dead ere his prime ;-
Young Lycidas,—and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string:
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse:
So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favor my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appeared

Under the opening eye-lids of the Morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star, that rose, at evening bright,

Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Tempered to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long ;
And old Damætas loved to hear our song.

But, O the heavy change! now thou art gone!
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves
With wild thyme* and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn :

The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;

gay

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:
Ay me! I fondly dream!

Had ye been there-for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,

When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?

Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

*Pren, time.

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind,)

To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guer'don* when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil,

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed."
O fountain Arethuse,† and thou honored flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds!
That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my oat proceeds,

And listens to the herald of the sea

That came in Neptune's plea ;

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,

"What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain ?”

And questioned every gust of rugged wings

That blows from off each beaked prom'ontory:

They knew not of his story;

And sage Hippotădes their answer brings,

That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the wild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks; Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, That on the green turf suck the honied showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. *Pron. gue as in guess.

† Pron. are 'thuso

Bring the rǎth primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the panzy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well attired woodbine,
With covslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little ease,

Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise;
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.

Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and, with new-spangled ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of him that walked the waves;

Where other groves and other streams along,

With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing, in their glory move
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.

Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still Morn went out with sandals gray;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

LESSON CLIX.

A Thunder-storm, among the Highlands of Scotland.-WILSON.

AN enormous thunder-cloud had lain all day over BenNevis, shrouding its summit in thick darkness, blackening its sides and base, wherever they were beheld from the surrounding country, with masses of deep shadow, and especially flinging down a weight of gloom upon that magnificent glen that bears the same name with the mountain, till now the afternoon was like twilight, and the voice of all the streams was distinct in the breathlessness of the vast solitary hollow. The inhabitants of all the straths, vales, glens, and dells, round and about the monarch of Scottish mountains, had, during each successive hour, been expecting the roar of thunder and the deluge of rain; but the huge conglomeration of lowering clouds would not rend asunder, although it was certain that a calm, blue sky could not be restored till all that dreadful assemblage had melted away into torrents, or been driven off by a strong wind from the sea.

All the cattle on the hills, and in the hollows, stood still or lay down in their fear-the wild deer sought in herds the shelter of the pine-covered cliffs-the raven hushed his hoarse croak in some grim cavern, and the eagle left the dreadful silence of the upper heavens. Now and then the shepherds looked from their huts, while the shadow of the thunder-clouds deepened the hues of their plaids and tartans; and at every creaking of the heavy branches of the pines, or wide-armed oaks, in the solitude of their inaccessible birth-place, the hearts of the lonely dwellers quaked, and they lifted up their eyes to see the first wide flash-the disparting of the masses of darkness-and paused to hear the long, loud rattle of heaven's artillery, shaking the foundations of the everlasting mountains. But all was yet silent.