Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed."
O fountain Arethuse,' and thou honored flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sea
That came in Neptune's plea ;
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap had doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings,
That blows from off each beakèd promontory:
They knew not of his story,
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed,
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Next Camus,3 reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
I Now Phoebus, whose strain was of a higher mood, has done speaking, he invokes the fountain Arethuse of Sicily, the country of Theocritus, and Mincius, the river of Mantua, Virgil's country, in compliment to those poets. 2 Æolus, the son of Hippotas.
3 The Cam, the river of Cambridge.
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge,
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.1
"Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge ?"
Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake,
Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain),
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake :
"How well could I have spared 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 shearer's feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest;
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!
What recks it them! What need they? They are sped :
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel 2 pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread :
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
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
1 Meaning the hyacinth, the leaves of which were supposed to be marked
with the mournful letters At, At. Cf. Ovid, Met. x. 210 sqq.
2 Probably equivalent to the Latin " stridens," creaking, piercing.
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 enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strow the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurled,
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;
I Probably Bellerus, one of the Cornish giants, fabulously supposed to dwell at the Land's End.
2 "A watch-tower and lighthouse formerly stood on the promontory called the Land's End, and looked, as Orosius says, towards another high tower at Brigantia in Gallicia, and consequently towards Bayona's Hold." - NEWTON.
Look homeward, angel now, and melt with ruth ; 1
And, O ye dolphins,2 waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 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 walked the waves.
Where other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he 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 forever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
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 rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
He touched the tender spots of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay ;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
2 A dolphin is said to have carried the body of Palamon to the shore of Corinth, where he was deified.
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,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night raven sings;
There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian 3 desert ever dwell.
But come thou goddess fair and free,
In Heaven ycleped 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 sages sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora playing,
I "This and the following poem are exquisitely beautiful in themselves, but appear much more beautiful when they are considered as they were written, in contrast with each other. There is a great variety of pleasing images in each of them; and it is remarkable that the poet represents several of the same objects as exciting both mirth and melancholy, and affecting us differently according to the different dispositions and affections of the soul. This is nature and experience." -NEWTON.
2 Erebus is more agreeable to mythology.
3 The Cimmerians lived in caves, and never saw the light of the sun.
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