And lead ye where ye may more near behold
What shallow searching fame hath left untold;
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone,
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon:
For know, by lot from Jove, I am the power
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower,
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.
And all my plants I save from nightly ill
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill:
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew,
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,
Or what the cross dire looking planet smites,
Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites.
When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallowed ground;
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasseled horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout
With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless.
But else in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial Syren's harmony,
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears.
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear:
And yet such music worthiest were to blaze
The peerless height of her immortal praise,
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,
If my inferior hand or voice could hit
Inimitable sounds: yet, as we go,
Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show,
I will assay, her worth to celebrate,
And so attend ye toward her glittering state;
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem.
O'er the smooth enameled green, Where no print of step hath been Follow me, as I sing
And touch the warbled string,
Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof.
Follow me:
I will bring you where she sits,
Clad in splendour as befits,
Her deity.
Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.
Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more
By sandy Ladon's lilied banks:
On old Lycæus, or Cyllene hoar,
Trip no more in twilight ranks;
Though Erymanth your loss deplore,
A better soil shall give ye thanks.
From the stony Mænalus
Bring your flocks, and live with us;
Here ye shall have greater grace,
To serve the lady of this place.
Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were,
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.
Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.
In this monody the author bewails a learned Friend, urinrta nately drowned in his passage from Chester or, the Ins seas, 1637, and by occasion foretells the ruin of our rupted clergy, then in their height.
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 has 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 favour 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 eyelids 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 wester ing wheel.
⚫ "So may some gentle Muse"-Muse in the masculit gender here means Poet
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,
Ór taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the whitethorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
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 promontory:
They know not of his story;
And sage Hippotades 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.
Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with wo.
Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorselessAh! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?'
Closed over 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:
Ah me! 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?
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 gerdon, 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 rumour lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all judging Jove;
As e pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed."
ountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal
l'ha strain I heard was of a higher mood: But now my pat proceeds,
Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,)
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
"How well could I have spared for thee, young
swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reckoning make,
Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest:
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how
to hold
A sheephook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are
sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they
draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said:
But that two-handed enginet at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."
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 flow'rets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star parely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied shower,
"The herald of the sea."-Triton.
↑ "Two-handed engine."-the are of reformation.
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crowtoe, and pale jessamine,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and, singing, in their glory move,
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 muskrose, and the well attired woodbine,
With cowslips 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 laureat hearse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ah 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 towards 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 occan 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 walk'd the
![[blocks in formation]](https://books.google.co.uk/books/content?id=J7w-AQAAMAAJ&output=html_text&pg=PA157&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&q=editions:HARVARD32044020184289&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U1XU485GHi1ioOSdDpgIxPNs0M6Hw&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=54,905,428,244)
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 dropt into the western bay:
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CON
SCIENCE UNDER THE LONG PAR
LIAMENT.
BECAUSE you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounced his liturgy,
To seize the widowed whore Plurality
From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred;
Dare ye for this abjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a classic hierarchy
Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rotherford ?
Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,.
Must now be named and printed heretics
By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call:
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing worse than those of
Trent.
That so the parliament May with their wholesome and preventive shears, Clip your phylacteries, though bauk vour ears, And succour our just fears When they shall read this clearly in vour charge, New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.
TO THE NIGHTINGALE. NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May, Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, Portend success in love; O if Jove's will Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now tirely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet had'st no reason why:
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I.
ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE
AGE OF TWENTY-THREE.
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud nor blossom showeth,
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely happy spirits indueth.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
TO A VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY, LADY, that in the prime of earliest youth Wisely hast shunned the broadway and the green,
And with those few art eminently seen,
That labour up the hill of heavenly truth, The better part with Mary and with Ruth Chosen thou hast; and they that overween, And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, No anger find in thee, but piety and ruth. Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be
Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastfu friends
Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night,
Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure.
TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY. DAUGHTER to that good earl, once president Of England's council and her treasury, Who lived in both, unstained with gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content, Till sad the breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chæronea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent,
Toward which time leads me, and the will of Though later born than to have known the days
That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.
Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheek, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, When thou taught'st Cambridge, and King Edward Greek.
I DID but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs:
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
But this is got by casting pearl to hogs;
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
License they mean when they cry liberty;
For who loves that, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.
TO MR. H. LAWES,
ON THE PUBLISHING HIS AIRS.
HARRY, whose tuneful and well measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent not to scan
With Midas' ears, committing short and long;
Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,
With praise enough for envy to look wan;
To after age thou shalt be writ the man,
That with smooth air could'st humour best our
tongue.
Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
To honour the the priest of Phoebus' choir, That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn, or story.
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing
Met in the milder shades of purgatorv.
ON THE RELIGIOUS MEMORY OF MRS. CATHARINE THOMSON, MY CHRISTIAN FRIEND, DECEASED 16th DECEMBER, 1646. WHEN faith and love, which parted from thee never,
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, Meekly thou did'st resign the earthy load
Of death, called life; which us from life doth
But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod, Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever. Love led them on, and Faith, who knew them best. Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beam
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest, And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes Before the Judge; who thenceforth bid thee rest, And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.
TO THE LORD GENERAL FAIRFAX. FAIRFAX, whose name in arms through Euro rings,
Filling each mouth with envy or with praise, And all her jealous monarchs with amaze And rumours loud, that daunt remotest kings, Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings
Victory home, though new rebellions raise Their hydra heads, and the false north displays Her broken league to imp their serpent wings. O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand,
(For what can war, but endless war still breed?) Till truth and right from violence be freed, And public faith cleared from the shameful brand Of public fraud. In vain doth valour bleed, While avarice and rapine share the land.
CROMWELL, Our chief of men, who through a cloud,
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast
plonghed,
And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud
Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pur-
sued,
While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots im brued,
And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet much re
To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renowned than war: new foes arise Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour VANE, young in years, but in sage counsel old Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
Than whom a better senator e'er held
|