Studies in English and American Literature, from Chaucer to the Present Time

Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath 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 favor my destined urn;
And as he passes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

For we were nursed upon the selfsame hill;
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;

12. watery bier, the water which 23. selfsame hill, Cambridge.

bears him up.

13. welter, roll.

parching, blistering.

15. Sisters, the Muses.

16. Jove, Jupiter.

18. coy, shy.

24. fed the same flock, etc. This refers to their close

companionship. The poet represents himself and his friend as shepherds, thus carrying out the allegory.

ANALYSIS.-7. compels. What is the subject? Does the verb agree only with the nearest nominative or with the whole line?

9. Young Lycidas. In what case?

10. Who would not, etc. Explain the meaning.

14. meed, tribute. What figure?

16. from beneath. Give grammatical construction.

17. string, the lyre. What figure?

18. Hence. What part of speech?

excuse. In what case?

22. bid. Give mode. be. Give mode.

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 westering wheel.
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 oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, 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

NOTES.-27. afield, to the field. | 29. battening, fattening.

37. But oh! etc. Here begins an apostrophe. Define Apostrophe a a figure of rhetoric.

37. art gone. Modernize.

39. shepherd.

In what case? thee, the woods, etc. Write the sen

tence in prose. Give the case of thee.

40. To what does the participial phrase o'ergrown, etc. relate? 41. And all their echoes. Give the case of echoes.

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 white-thorn blows;

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep

Closed o'er 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.

Ay 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,

NOTES. 45. canker, canker- | 58. Muse, Calliope, the mother

ANALYSIS.-44. Fanning, etc. What does this phrase modify?

47. What figure in the line?

45-49. Rewrite in prose.

50. remorseless deep. What figure?

56. Ay me! Dispose of me.

59. for her enchanting son. What does the phrase modify?

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 uncessant 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 Neærea'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;

men, and in one of their 65, 66. To tend.... thankless

drunken orgies they seized

him and tore him to pieces.

The fragments of his body

Muse? to practise poetry,

that brings no return or recompense.

were gathered and buried 67. use, are accustomed or are at the foot of Mount Olym

wont to do.

pus, but his head was cast 68, 69. Amaryllis and Neærea

into the river Hebrus, and
it floated out to the island

of Lesbos, now Mitylene, in
the Ægean Sea.

are girls named in Virgil as beloved by shepherds.

70. clear, noble.

73. guerdon, reward.

64. what boots it, what profits it. 77. Phoebus, Apollo, the god of uncessant, incessant.

prophecy and song.

ANALYSIS.-67. Were it, etc. What is the grammatical construc

tion?

71. That last infirmity. What is the antecedent?

72. To scorn, etc. What does the phrase modify?

73. Transpose the line.

75, 76. Comes the blind, etc. Transpose this sentence. Name the mbject.

"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,

Then came in Neptune's plea;

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,