That owned the virtuous ring and glass:
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride:
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Thus, night, oft see me in thy pale career, Tall civil-suited morn appear,
Not tricked and frounced as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,
But kercheft in a comely cloud,
While rocking winds are piping loud,
Or ushered with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And, when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring,
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke,
Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish eye;
While the bee with honied thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing
And the waters murmuring,
With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid.
And, as I wake, sweet music breath
About, above, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show
And every herb that sips the dew:
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give, And I with thee will choose to live.
Part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby at Harefield, by some noble persons of her fami ly; who appear on the scene in pastoral nabit, moving to ward the seat of state, with this song.
Look, nymphs and shepherds, look, What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that which we from hence descry, Too divine to be mistook:
To whom our vows and wishes bend;
Here our solemn search hath end.
Fame, that, her high worth to raise,
Seemed erst so lavish and profuse,
We may just now accuse
Of detraction from her praise;
Less than half we find exprest,
Envy bid conceal the rest.
Mark, what radiant state she spreads,
In circle round her shining throne,
Shooting her beams like silver threads;
This, this is she alone,
Sitting like a goddess bright,
In the centre of her light.
Might she the wise Latona be,
Or the towered Cybele,
Mother of a hundred gods?
Juno dares not give her odds;
Who had thought this clime had held
A deity so unparalleled?
As they come forward, the Genius of the wood turning towards them, speaks.
Stay, gentle swains, for, though in this disguise, I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes; Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung Of that renowned flood, so often sung, Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse, And ye, the breathing roses of the wood, Fair silver buskined nymphs, as great and good, I know this quest of yours, and free intent, Was all in honour and devotion meant To the great mistress of yon princely shrine, Whom with low reverence I adore as mine; And, with all helpful service will comply To further this night's glad solemnity;
And lead ye where ye may more near behold
What shallow searching fame hath left untold;
Which I full oft, amidst these shades alone,
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon:
For know, by lot from Jove, I am the power
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower,
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove
With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.
And all my plants I save from nightly ill
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapours chill:
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew,
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,
Or what the cross dire looking planet smites,
Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites.
When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallowed ground;
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasseled horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout
With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless.
But else in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial Syren's harmony,
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears.
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To full the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear:
And yet such music worthiest were to blaze
The peerless height of her immortal praise,
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,
If my inferior hand or voice could hit
Inimitable sounds: yet, as we go,
Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show,
I will assay, her worth to celebrate,
And so attend ye toward her glittering state;
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem.
O'er the smooth enameled green, Where no print of step hath been Follow me, as I sing
And touch the warbled string,
Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof.
Follow me:
I will bring you where she sits,
Clad in splendour as befits,
Her deity.
Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.
Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more
By sandy Ladon's lilied banks:
On old Lycæus, or Cyllene hoar,
Trip no more in twilight ranks;
Though Erymanth your loss deplore,
A better soil shall give ye thanks.
From the stony Manalus
Bring your flocks, and live with us;
Here ye shall have greater grace,
To serve the lady of this place.
Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were,
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.
Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.
In this monody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortu nately drowned in his passage from Chester or. the Irish seas, 1637, and by occasion foretells the ruin of our rupted clergy, then in their height.
YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And, with forced fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year:
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and has not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin then, sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of jove doth spring'
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse
So may some gentle Muse*
With lucky words favour my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill Together both, ere the high lawns appeared Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield, and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night Oft till the star that rose at evening bright, Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his wester. ing wheel.
"So may some gentle Muse-Muse in the masculi gender here means Poet
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Tempered to the oaten flute;
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damotas loved to hear our song.
But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn:
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays,
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the whitethorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless
deep
Closed over the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:
Ah me! I fondly dream!
Had ye been there-for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days:
But the fair guerdon, when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
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 rumour lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all judging Jove;
As e pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed."
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal
I'has strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sca*
That came in Neptune's plea:
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain:
And questioned every gust of rugged wings,
That blows from off each beaked promontory:
They know 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, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with wo.
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 sheephook, 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 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 spreau:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said:
But that two-handed enginet at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.'
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Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells, and flow'rets 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 parely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied shower,
· "The herald of the sea."-Triton.
↑ "Two-handed engine "-the uxe of reformation.
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crowtoc, and pale jessamine,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and, singing, in their glory move,
And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
The muskrose, 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 strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little
ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ah me? Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er 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 towards Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woful 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 walk'd the
waves;
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And bears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love,
There entertain him all the saints above,
*"The fable of Bellerus old," &c. The Bellerian promontory or Land's end in Cornwall, near which is Mount St. Michael, a fortress on a rock, named from a supposed vision
or apparition of St. Michael
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 stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CON
SCIENCE UNDER THE LONG PAR
LIAMENT.
BECAUSE you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounced his liturgy,
To seize the widowed whore Plurality
From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred;
Dare ye for this abjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a classic hierarchy
Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rotherford?
Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,
Must now be named and printed heretics
By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call:
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing worse than those of
Trent.
That so the parliament May with their wholesome and preventive shears, Clip your phylacteries, though bauk vour ears,
And succour our just fears When they shall read this clearly in vour charge, New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.
TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
O NIGHTINGALE, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still; Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May, Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, Portend success in love; O if Jove's will Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now tirely sing, ere the rude bird of hate
Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet had'st no reason why:
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I.
ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE
AGE OF TWENTY-THREE.
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud nor blossom showeth.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely happy spirits indueth.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY. DAUGHTER to that good earl, once president Of England's council and her treasury, Who lived in both, unstained with gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content, Till sad the breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Charonea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent.
Toward which time leads me, and the will of Though later born than to have known the days
Wherein your father flouished, yet by you, Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise, That all both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honoured Margaret.
ON THE DETRACTION WHICH FOL LOWED UPON MY WRITING CERTAIN TREATISES.
A BOOK was writ of late called Tetrachordon, And woven close, both matter, form, and style: The subject new: it walked the town a while, Numbering good intellects; now seldom pored
Cries the stall-reader, Bless us! what a word on A title page is this! and some in file
Stand spelling false, while one might walk to Mile
End Green. Why is it harder, Sirs, than Gordon,
Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp?
Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
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