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

H

XIV.

*IL PENSEROSO.

ENCE 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 fome idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes poffefs,

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As

If man were wife to fee't,
But only Melancholy,
Oh fweeteft Melancholy.
Welcome folded arms, and fix'd
theeyes,

A fight that piercing mortifies,
A look that's faften'd to the
ground,

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Then ftretch our bones in a flill
gloomy valley,
Nothing's fo dainty fweet, as lovely
Melancholy.

2. The brood of folly without father bred,] He affigns the fame kind of origin to these fantastic

A tongue chain'd up without a joys, as Hefiod does to dreams,

found.

which he fays the Night brings forth without a father. Theog. 212.

- ετικε δε φύλον ονείρων" Ου τινι κοιμηθείσα θεα τεκε Νυξ ερεβεινη.

Mr. Thyer had made the fame obfervation with me; and we may be the more certain of this allufion on account of the following comparison likeft bovering dreams.

As thick and numberless

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

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

Hail divinest Melancholy,

Whose faintly visage is too bright.....
To hit the fenfe of human fight,

And therefore to our weaker view

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O'erlaid with black, ftaid wisdom's hue;

Black, but fuch as in esteem

Prince Memnon's fifter might beseem,
Or that ftarr'd Ethiop queen that strove

To fet her beauties praise above

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The

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

Thee bright-hair'd Vefta long of yore
To folitary Saturn bore;

His daughter the (in Saturn's reign,

Such mixture was not held a stain).
Oft in glimmering bow'rs and glades
He met her, and in fecret fhades
Of woody Ida's inmost 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,

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her age, daring to compare herfelf to the Nereids, raifed their indignation against her to fuch a degree, that they fent a prodigious whale into the country, fo that to appeafé them the was commanded by the oracle to expofe her daughter Andromeda, to be devoured by the monster; but Perfeus delivered Andromeda, and procured Caffiope to be taken into Heaven; for which laft reafon our author here calls her the ftarr'd Ethiop queen. Peck.

23. Thee bright-hair'd Vefta &c] VOL. II.

And fable stole of Cyprus lawn,

Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

Come but keep thy wonted ftate,
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 thyself to marble, till

With a fad leaden downward caft

Thou fix them on the earth as fast:

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 Leifure,
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 song,
In her fweeteft, 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