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Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting Soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout,
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that ty

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His half regain'd Eurydice.

These delights, if thou canft give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

IL

XIV.

PENSERO SO.

ENCE vain deluding joys,

HE

The brood of folly without father bred,

How little you bested,

Or fill'd the fixed mind with all your toys? Dwell in fome idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes poffefs, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the fun-beams, Or likeft hovering dreams

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The

The fickle penfioners of Morpheus train. But hail thou Goddess, fage and holy,

Hail divinest Melancholy,

Whose faintly visage is too bright

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To hit the sense of human fight,

And therefore to our weaker view

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O'er-laid with black, flaid wisdom's hue;

Prince Memnon's fifter might beseem,

Black, but fuch as in esteem

Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove

To set her beauties praise above

The Sea-Nymphs, and their pow'rs offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended,

Thee bright-har'd Vesta long of yore
To folitary Saturn bore;

His daughter fhe (in Saturn's reign,
Such mixture was not held a stain.)
Oft in glimmering bow'rs and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmoft grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come penfive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, ftedfaft, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And fable stole of Cyprus lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

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Come,

Come, but keep thy wonted state,

With even step, and musing gate,

And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt foul fitting in thine eyes :
There held in holy paffion ftill,

Forget thyfelf to marble, till

Thou fix them on the earth as fast:

With a fad leaden downward caft

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet,
Spare Faft, that oft with Gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring

Ay round about Jove's altar fing:
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
But first, and chiefeft, with thee bring,
Him that yon foars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The Cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hift along,
'Lefs Philomel will deign a fong,

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In her sweetest, faddeft plight,

Smoothing the rugged brow of night,

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er th' accuftom'd oak;

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Sweet bird that fhun'ft the noife of folly,

Most musical, moft melancholy!

Thee chauntrefs of the woods among

I woo to hear thy even-fong;

And

And miffing thee, I walk unfeen
On the dry smooth-fhaven green,
To behold the wand'ring moon,
Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray

Through the Heav'n's wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head fhe bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I heard the far-off Curfeu found,
Over some wide-water'd fhore,
Swinging flow with fullen roar;
Or if the air will not permit,
Some ftill removed place will fit,

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Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,

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Be seen in fome high lonely tow'r,
Whère I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere

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And of thofe Demons that are found

In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true confent
With planet, or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous tragedy
In scepter'd pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the bufkin'd stage.
But, O fad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Mufæus from his bower,
Or bid the foul of Orpheus fing

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Such notes, as warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,

And made Hell grant what love did seek.
Or call up him that left half told

The story of Cambuscan bold,

Of Camball, and of Algarfife,

And who had Canace to wife,

That own'd the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass,

On which the Tartar king did ride;

And if ought elfe great bards befide

In fage and folemn tunes have sung,

Of turneys and of trophies hung,

Of forests, and inchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

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Thus

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