IL PENSEROSO. Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond 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. 10 But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue; Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended; His daughter she (in Saturn's reign Come pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, 35 With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, 19. Ethiop queen; Cassiope, who was so beautiful that the Nereids determined on her destruction. She was carried, it is said, to the skies, and made a star of: hence the epithet. And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. Him that yon soars on golden wing, Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among I woo to hear thy even-song; And missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, Through the Heav'n's wide pathless way; Oft, on a plat of rising ground, Or the belman's drowsy charm, To bless the doors from nightly harm: 36. The cheerful character of the former poem rendered it necessary to commence with a description of morning sights an uleasures; in 'his the poet properly begins with evening. Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, What worlds, or what vast regions, hold Or what (though rare) of later age But, O sad Virgin, that thy power 85 90 200 105 Such notes as, warbled to the string, That own'd the virtuous ring and glass, 88. Hermes Trismegistus. The great Egyptian philosopher who flourished, it is supposed, near the time of Moses. 99. The ancient tragedians drew the subjects of their principal dramas from the history of the kings of Thebes, &c. 104. Museus, a celebrated ancient poet. 109. An allusion to a tale which Chaucer left unfinished. Spenser endeavoured to complete it. Fae. Qu. B. 4. Can. 2. St. 32. U |