In heaven ycleped Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To ivy-crownèd Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as some sager 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,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,

So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

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Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 25 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 ye 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 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 listening 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,

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By hedgerow 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 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 gray,
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
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some Beauty lies,
The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two agèd 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 rebecks sound

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By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. Towered cities please us then,

And the busy hum of men,

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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
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;

Such strains as would have won the ear

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That Orpheus' self may heave his head 145

From golden slumber on a bed

Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear

She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar's lanthorn led,
Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowing flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubbar fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.

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Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 115

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. 10
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

15

O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue; Black, but such as in esteem

20

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starred 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-haired 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 bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, 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 even step, and musing gait,
And looks commércing 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.

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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 tower,
Where I may oft outwatch 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 underground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined 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 who had Canacé to wife,

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,

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115

Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear. 120
Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited Morn appear,

In her sweetest saddest plight,

Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,

Not tricked and frounced as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt,

But kerchieft in a comely cloud,

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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

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His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,

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Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star
I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy,
As now I do. But first I must put off
These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris' woof,
And take the weeds and likeness of a swain
That to the service of this house belongs, 85
Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied
song,

Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,

And hush the waving woods; nor of less faith, And in this office of his mountain watch Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90 Of this occasion. But I hear the tread Of hateful steps; I must be viewless now. Comus enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the other; with him a rout of Monsters, headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts. but otherwise like men and women, their apparel glistering. They come in making a riotous and unruly noise with torches in their hands.

Comus. The star that bids the shepherd fold

Now the top of heaven doth hold;

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In the steep Atlantic stream:
And the slope Sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing toward the other goal
Of his chamber in the east.

Meanwhile, welcome joy, and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy Dance and Jollity.
Braid your locks with rosy twine,
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigour now is gone to bed;

And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sour Severity,

With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We, that are of purer fire,

Imitate the starry Quire,

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Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and seas, with all their finny
drove,

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Of midnight torches burns! mysterious Dame, 130

That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb

Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the air!
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,

Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend

Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice Morn on the Indian steep
From her cabined loop-hole peep,
And to the tell-tale Sun descry
Our concealed solemnity.

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
In a light fantastic round.

The Measure

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140