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xxxviii. Edgar slaying Ethelwold for false play
in wooing. Wherein may be set out
his pride, and lust, which he thought to
close by favouring monks and building
monasteries, Also the disposition of
woman in Elfrida towards her hus-
band. [Peck proposes, and justly,
I think, to read cloke instead of close.]
Ixxxix. Swane beseidging London, and Ethelred
repuls't by the Londoners.

xc. Harold slaine in battel, by William the
Norman. The first scene may begin
with the ghost of Alfred, the second son
of Ethelred, slaine in cruel manner by
Godwin, Harold's father; his mother
and brother dissuading him.
xci. Edmund Ironside defeating the Danes
at Brentford; with his combat with Ca-
nute.

xcii. Edmund Ironside murder'd by Edrick the
traitor, and reveng'd by Canute.
xciii. Gunilda, daughter to king Canute and
Emma, wife to Henry III. emperour,
accus'd of inchastitie; defended by her
English page in combat against a giant-
like adversary; who by him at two blows
is slaine, &c. Speed in the life of Ca-

nute.

xciv. Hardiknute dying in his cups: an example to riot.

xcv. Edward the Confessor's divorsing and im-
prisoning his noble wife Editha, God-
win's daughter. Wherin is showed his
over-affection to strangers, the cause
of Godwin's insurrection. Wherein

Godwin's forbearance of battel, prais'd;
and the English moderation on both
sides, magnifi'd. His [Edward's] slack-
nesse to redresse the corrupt clergie,
and superstitious prætence of chas-
titie.

SCOTCH STORIES, OR RATHER BRI-
TISH OF THE NORTH PARTS,

xcvi. Athirco slain by Natholochus, whose daughters he had ravish'l; and this Natholocus, usurping thereon the kingdom, seeks to slay the kindred of Athirco, who scape him and conspire against him. He sends a witch to know the event. The witch tells the messenger, that he is the man, that shall slay Natholocus. He detests it; but, in his journie home, changes his mind, and performs it. Scotch Chron. English. p. 68, 69. and Donwald. A strange story of witchcraft and murder discover'd and reveng'd. Scotch story, 149 &c. xcviii. Haie, the plowman, who, with his two sons that were at plow, running to the battell that was between the Scots and Danes in the next field, staid the fight of his

xcvi. Lu

caus'd the victorie, &c. Scotch story, p. 155 &c.

xcix. Kenneth, who, having privily poison'd Malcolm Duffe that his own son might succeed, is slain by Fenella. Scotch Hist. p. 157, 158, &c.

c. Macbeth. Beginning at the arrivall of Malcolm at Mackduffe. The matter of Duncan may be express't by the appearing of his ghost,

LYCIDAS.

In this MONODY, the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.

[Edward King, the subject of this Monody, was the son of sir John King, knight, secretary for Ireland, under queen Elizabeth, James the first, and Charles the first. He was sailing from Chester to Ireland, on a visit to his friends and relations in that country: these were, his brother sir Robert King, knight; and his sisters, Anne wife of sir George Caulfield lord Claremont, and Margaret, abovementioned, wife of sir George Loder, chief justice of Ireland; Edward King bishop of Elphin, by whom he was baptized; and William Chappel, then dean of Cashel, and provost of Dublin college, who had been his tutor at Christ's college Cambridge, and was afterwards bishop of Cork and Ross, and in this pastoral is probably the same person that is styled old Damoetas, v. 56. When, in calm weather, not far from the English coast, the ship, a very crazy vessel, a fatal and perfidious bark, struck on a rock, and suddenly sunk to the bottom with all that were on board, not one escaping, Aug. 10, 1637. King was now only twentyfive years old. He was perhaps a native of Ireland,

At Cambridge, he was distinguished for his piety, and proficiency in polite literature. He has no inelegant copy of Latin iambics prefixed to a Latin comedy called Senile Odium, acted at Queen's college, Cambridge, by the youth of that society, and written by P, Hausted, Cantab. 1633, 12mo. From which I select these lines, as containing a judicious satire on the false taste, and the customary mechanical or unnatural expedients, of the drama that then subsisted.

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Amoris; atque his vim abstulere noxiam

Casti lepores, innocua festivitas,

Nativa suavitas, proba elegantia, &c."

countrymen, renew'd the battell, and He also appears with credit in the Cambridge

Public Verses of his time. He has a copy of Latin iambics, in the Anthologia on the King's Recovery, Cantab. 1632. 4to. p. 43. Of Latin elegiacs, in the Genethliacum Acad. Cantabrig. Ibid. 1631. 4to. p. 39. Of Latin iambics in Rex Redux, Ibid. 1633. 4to. p. 14. See also EYNMAIA, from Cambridge, Ibid. 1637. 4to. Signat. C. 3.]

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 forc'd 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 favour my destin'd urn;
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

10

30

For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
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, 30
Toward Heaven's descent had slop'd his wester-
ing wheel.

Mean while the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damotas lov'd 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,

40

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorse-
less deep

Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd 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!

51

[done?

Had ye been there for what could that have

60

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 goary 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
71
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon 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

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He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?
And question'd every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory :
They knew not of his story;

And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

100

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 inscrib'd with woe. "Ah! who hath reft "(quoth he)" my dearest Last came, and last did go, [ pledge?" The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 110 (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) He shook his miter'd locks, and stern bespake: "How well could I have spar'd 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 shearers' feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest;
Eliud mouths! that scarce themselves know how
to hold

A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! 121
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 bungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they
draw,

130

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed:
But that two-handed engine 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 flowerets 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 sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 142
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureat herse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little ease,

150

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 hurl'd,
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.

160

[more,

169

Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no 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 walk'd the

waves;

Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks be 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;180
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

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Smooth is then altered to fam'd, and next to konour'd: And soft-sliding to smooth-sliding. Ver. 105. Scraul'd ore with figures dim. Inwrought is in the margin.

Ver. 129. Daily devours apace, and little sed.
Nothing is erased.

Ver. 138. On whose fresh lap the swart star stintly looks.

At first sparely, as at present. Ver. 139. Bring hither, &c.

Ver. 142. Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies,

Colouring the pale check of uninjoy`dlove;
And that sad floure that strove

To write his own woes on the vermeil
graine:

Next, adde Narcissus t'at still weeps in vaine;

The woodbine, and the pancie freak't with jet,

The glowing violet,

The cowslip wan that hangs his pensive head,

And every bud that sorrow's liverie weares; Let daffadillies fill their cupswith teares, Bid amaranthus all his beautie shed. Hore also the well-attir'd woodbine appears as at

present, altered from garish columbine; and sad embroidery, an alteration of sad escocheon, instead of sorrow's liverie.

Ver. 153. Let our sad thought, &c.

Ver. 154. Ay mee, whilst thee the floods and sounding seas.

Ver. 160. Sleep'st by the fable of Corineus old. But Bellerus is a correction.

Ver. 176. Listening the unexpressive nuptial

song.

L'ALLEGRO.

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights
unholy!

Find out some uncouth cell,

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Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Some time walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern-gate
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Rob'd in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his sithe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures;
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast,
The labouring clouds do often rest;

Where brooding Darkness sads his jealous Meadows trim with daisies pide,

wings,

And the night-raven sings;

There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou goddess fair and free,

In Heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne,

And by men, heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,

With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Or whether (as some sager sing)

The frolic wind, that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-maying;
There on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,
Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

[rocks,

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,

Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull Night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled Dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of Darkness thin.
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:

Shallow brooks, and rivers wide:
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smoaks,
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,
Are at their savoury dinner set

Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tann'd haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Daneing in the chequer'd shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sun-shine holy-day,
Till the live-long day-light fail:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How faery Mab the junkets eat;
She was pinch'd, and pull'd, she sed;
And he, by friars lantern led,

Tells how the drudging goblin swet,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn,
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubbar fiend,
And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep.
Tower'd cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize

Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear

In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
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 tie
The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regain'd Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

IL PENSEROSO.

HENCE, vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred!
How little you bested,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fund with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams;
Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy,
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view

O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue;
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended;
Yet thou art higher far descended:
Thee bright-hair'd Vesta, long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she; in Saturn's reign,
Such mixture was not held a stain:
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, stedfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,

And sable stole of Cyprus lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait;
And looks commércing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast:

And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing:
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure:
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song,
In her sweetest saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er the accustom'd oak:

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chantress, oft, the woods among,

I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And, missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering Moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the Heaven's wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud
Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off Curfeu sound,
Over some wide-water'd shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar:
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the belman's drowsy charm,

To bless the doors from nightly harm.
Or let my lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent.
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 buskin'd stage.

But, O sad virgin, that thy power
Might raise Museus from his bower!

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