class="v">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 Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,

Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever against eating 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 heap’d Elysian flow’rs, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto, to have quite set free

His half-regain’d Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

Il Penseroso

Hence vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred,

How little you bested,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys;

Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,

As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,

Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train.

But hail thou goddess, sage and holy,

Hail divinest Melancholy,

Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight;

And therefore to our weaker view,

O’er-laid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue;

Black, but such as in esteem,

Prince Memnon’s sister might beseem,

Or that starr’d Ethiop queen that strove

To set her beauty’s praise above

The sea nymphs, and their powers offended.

Yet thou art higher far descended,

Thee bright-hair’d Vesta long of yore,

To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she (in Saturn’s reign,

Such mixture was not held a stain)

Oft in glimmering bow’rs and glades

He met her, and in secret shades

Of woody Ida’s inmost grove,

While yet there was no fear of Jove.

Come pensive nun, devout and pure,

Sober, stedfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,

Flowing with majestic train,

And sable stole of cypress lawn,

Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

Come, but keep thy wonted state,

With ev’n step, and musing gait,

And looks commercing with the skies,

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:

There held in holy passion still,

Forget thyself to marble, till

With a sad leaden downward cast,

Thou fix them on the earth as fast.

And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,

Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,

And hears the Muses in a ring,

Aye round about Jove’s altar sing.

And add to these retired Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;

But first, and chiefest, with thee bring

Him that yon soars on golden wing,

Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,

The cherub Contemplation;

And the mute Silence hist along,

’Less Philomel will deign a song,

In her sweetest, saddest plight,

Smoothing the rugged brow of night,

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,

Gently o’er th’ accustom’d oak.

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,

To behold the wand’ring Moon,

Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray

Through the heav’ns wide pathless way;

And oft, as if her head she bow’d,

Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft on a plat of rising ground,

I hear the far-off curfew sound,

Over some wide-water’d shore,

Swinging slow with sullen roar;

Or if the air will not permit,

Some still removed place will fit,

Where glowing embers through the room

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,

Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth,

Or the bellman’s drowsy charm,

To bless the doors from nightly harm.

Or let my lamp at midnight hour,

Be seen in some high lonely tow’r,

Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,

With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere

The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds, or what vast regions hold

The immortal mind that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook:

And of those dæmons that are found

In fire, air, flood, or under ground,

Whose power hath a true consent

With planet, or with element.

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy

In sceptr’d pall come sweeping by,

Presenting Thebes’, or Pelop’s line,

Or the tale of Troy divine,

Or what (though rare) of later age,

Ennobled hath the buskin’d stage.

But, O sad Virgin, that thy power

Might raise Musæus from his bower,

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing

Such notes as, warbled to the string,

Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,

And made Hell grant what love did seek.

Or call up him that left half told

The story of Cambuscan bold,

Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

And