With the mincing Dryades

On the lawns, and on the leas.

965

This second song presents them to their Father

and Mother.

Noble Lord, and Lady bright,

I have brought ye new delight,
Here behold so goodly grown

Three fair branches of your own;

Heav'n hath timely tried their youth,

970

Their faith, their patience, and their truth,

And sent them here through hard assays

With a crown of deathless praise,

Revels the spruce and jocund Spring,

995

The Graces, and the rosy-bosom'd Hours,

Thither all their bounties bring;

And drenches with Elysian dew

(List, mortals, if your ears be true)

Beds of hyacinth and roses,

Where young Adonis oft reposes,

976. This farewell of the spirit is in close imitation of Ariel's song in the Tempest, Act 5. Sc. 3.

995. Purfled, embroidered.

After her wand'ring labours long,

Till free consent the Gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.

1010

Mortals that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,

Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

1002. Th' Assyrian queen; Venus, so called because
first worshipped by the Assyrians.

1020

There is a moral in this poem as sweetly and purely delicate as the verse is exquisite for its lovely images and melody. It was performed as a drama at Ludlow Castle, in 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, President of Wales, and was printed in 1637.

L'ALLEGRO.

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

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

[unholy!

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights

This celebrated little descriptive poem and its companion, have preserved their distinct originality amid the crowd of similar compositions with which they are surrounded. They owe both their excellence and their popularity to the domestic character of their imagery, and to their direct appeal to the emotions which belong to the enjoyment of external nature. In other poems of the same kind, the sentiments introduced are frequently those of the writer only, and not those which must, by the most general

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous

And the night raven sings;

5

[wings,

There under ebon shades and low-brow'd rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

But come, thou Goddess fair and free,

In Heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,

And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more

10

15

So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

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

25

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;

80

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,

35

laws of human thought and feeling, belong to both the author and the reader. Sensations of gladness or melancholy may be infinitely varied, and in a poem of sentiment or character should bear the deep impress of personality; but when nature is described in her cheerful or sombre aspect, the connexion between the object and the emotion should be certain and instantaneous. If the reader compare these poems with other descriptive compositions, and the feelings with which he reads them, he will better perceive the peculiar excellence of the former.

L'Allegro, the cheerful man, and Il Penseroso, the melancholy man, both Italian terms, and well adapted to the author's purpose. For the mythology of the poems, Milton is his own authority.

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:
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring 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,
Robed 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 scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the landskip round it measures,

Russet lawns and fallows grey,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest,
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
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

80

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,
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 Phyllis 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 rebecs sound,

To many a youth and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequer'd shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine 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, sh said,

And he by friar's lantern led;

'Tells how the drudging goblin swet,

105

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 lubber fiend,

110

And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length

Basks at the fire his hairy strength,

And crop-full out of door he flings,

Ere the first cock his matin rings.

Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

115

By whisp'ring 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,

120

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes

Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend