My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

The leaves should all be black whereon I write, And letters, where my tears have washed, a wannish white.

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirled the prophet up at Chebar flood;
My spirit some transporting cherub feels,
To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.
Mine
eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store,
And here through grief my feeble hands up lock,
Yet on the softened quarry would I score
My plaining verse as lively as before;

For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in ordered characters.

Or should I thence, hurried on viewless wing,
Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild,
And I (for grief is easily beguiled)

Might think the infection of my sorrows loud Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud. This subject the Author finding to be above the years he hal, whe: he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.

And perfectly divine,

Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, Triumphing over Death, and Chance, ard thee, O Time.

UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright
That erst with music, and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful shepherds' car,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along
Through the soft silence of the listening night;
Now mourn; and, if sad share with us to bear
Your fiery essence can distil no tear,
Burn in your sighs, and borrow
Seas wept from our deep sorrow:
He, who with all Heaven's heraldry whilere
Entered the world, now bleeds to give us ease
Alas, how soon our sin
Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize!

AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.

BLEST pair of Syrens, pledges of heavenly joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And to our high-raised fantasy presen
That undisturbed song of pure consent,
Aye sung before the sapphire coloured throne
To him that sits thereon,

With saintly shout, and solemn jubiiee;
Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,

Aut the supreme throne

Ora, to whose happy making sight alone

In the poems where no date is prefixed, and no circumdirect us to ascertain the time when they were com

Q

May rightly answer that melodious noise;

As once we did, till disproportioned sin
Jarred against Nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made

To their great Lord, whose love their motions swayed

In perfect diapason, whilst they stood

In first obedience, and state of good.

O may we soon again renew that song,

And keep in tune with Heaven, till God ere long To his celestial concert us unite,

To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light!

AN EPITAPH

ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER.

THIS rich marble doth inter
The honoured wife of Winchester,
A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir,
Besides what her virtues fair
Added to her noble birth,

More than she could own from earth.
Summers three times eight save one
She had told; alas! too soon,
After so short time of breath,

To house with darkness, and with death.
Yet had the number of her days
Been as complete as was her praise,
Nature and Fate had had no strife,
In giving limit to her life.

Her high birth, and graces sweet,
Quickly found a lover meet;
The virgin choir for her request
The God that sits at marriage feast;
He at their invoking came,
But with a scarce well-lighted flame:
And in his garland, as he stood,
Ye might discern a cypress bud.
Once had the early matrons run
To greet her of a lovely son,
And now with second hope she goes,
And calls Lucina to her throes;
But, whether by mischance or blame
Atropos for Lucina came;
And with remorseless cruelty
Spoiled at once both fruit and tree:
The hapless babe, before his birth,
Had burial, yet not laid in earth;
And the languished mother's womb
Was not long a living tomb.

So have I seen some tender slip,
Saved with care from winter's nip,
The pride of her carnation train,
Plucked up by some unheedy swain,
Who only thought to crop the flower
New shot up from vernal shower;
But the fair blossom hangs the head
Sideways as on a dying bed,

And those pearls of dew she wears,
Prove to be presaging tears,
Which the sad morn had let fall
On her hastening funeral.
Gentle lady, may thy grave
Peace and quiet ever have;
After this thy travail sore
Sweet rest seize thee ever more,
That, to give the world increase,
Shortened hast thy own life's lease
Here, besides the sorrowing
That thy noble house doth bring,
Here be tears of perfect moan
Wept for thee in Helicon;
And some flowers, and some bays,
For thy hearse, to strew the ways,
Sent thee from the banks of Came,
Devoted to thy virtuous name;

Whilst thou, bright Saint, high sit'st ir glory.
Next her, much like to thee in story,
That fair Syrian shepherdess,
Who, after years of barrenness,
The highly favoured Joseph bore
To him that served for her before,
And at her next birth, much like thee,
Through pangs fled to felicity,
Far within the bosom bright
Of blazing Majesty and Light;
There with thee, new welcome Saint,
Like fortunes may her sou! acquaint,
With thee there clad in radiant sheen;
No marchioness, but now a queen.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow: and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die.

ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER, Who sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to London, by reason of the plague.

HERE lies old Hobson; Death has broke his girt,
And here, alas! hath laid him in the dirt;
Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that, if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had, any time these ten years full,
Dodged with him, betwixt Cambridge and The
Bull.

And surely Death could never have prevailed,
Had not his weekly course of carriage failed;
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,

In the kind office of a chamberlain

Ease was his chief disease; and, to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,
That even to his last breath, (there be that say't,)
As he were pressed to death, he cried, more weight;
But, had his doings lasted as they were,
He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas,

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase.
His letters are delivered all and gone,
Only remains this superscription.

L'ALLEGRO.

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

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

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

Found out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night raven sings;

There, under cbon shades, and low-browed rocks,

ANOTHER ON THE SAME.

HERE lieth one, who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;
So hung his destiny, never to rot,
While he might still jog on and keep his trot,
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay
Until his revolution was at stay.

Tine numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion numbered out his time;
And, like an engine moved with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceased, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm,
Too long vacation hastened on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sickened,
Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quick-
ened;
Nay,' quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretch'd;
If I may'nt carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetched,
But tow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers.'

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 sages 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, The fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

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 watchtower 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 brier, 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 slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime 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 furrowed land,
And the milk maid 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 landscape round it measures,
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The lab'ring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide:
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
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 Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves:
Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecs sound

"Cynosure of neighbouring eyes."-The pole star, in the lesse bear

To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holy-day,

Till the livelong daylight fail:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How fairy Mab the junkets eat;

She was pinched, and pulled, she said:
And he, by friar's lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,
To carn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn,
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And cropful out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered 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 Shakspeare, Fancy's child
Warble his native woodnotes wild.

And ever, against cating 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 heaped Elysian flowers, and lear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.

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