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When we for age could neither read nor write,
The subject made us able to indite.
The soul, with nobler resolutions deckt,
The body stooping, does herself erect:
No mortal parts are requisite to raise
Her, that unbody'd can her Maker praise.
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er:
So, calm are we, when passions are no more:
For, then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness, which age descries,

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Find out some uncouth1 cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven ycleped2 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 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.

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 check,
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 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:
Some time walking, not unseen,
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,

1 Uncouth means here unknown, strange, remote.
2 Named.

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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 eyes 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,

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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;

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That Orpheus' self may heave his head

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His half-regained Eurydice.

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These delights if thou canst give,

And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holyday,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

Till the livelong daylight fail:

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

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With stories told of many a feat,

How Faery Mab the junkets' eat.

IL PENSEROSO

(1634)

She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar's lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

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When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

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is shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down the lubber" fiend,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

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And, stretched out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength,

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, Or likest hovering dreams,

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Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

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

To hit the sense of human sight,

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And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,

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This ambiguous expression has been frequently discussed; it may mean that every shepherd tells his tale of love; or that the shepherds tell stories to each other; or that each shepherd counts his sheep. Tell may mean either relate or count, as to "tell a story,' "or to "tell one's beads," or "to tell one's money." If this last interpretation is adopted tale=simply to count the sheep.

An early form of violin.

A kind of cream cheese, here delicious sweetmeats. Eat is the old form of the past terse.

Robin Goodfellow, a serviceable fairy refined and etherealized by Shakespeare into l'uck in the Midsummer Night's Dream.

7 Clumsy, sluggish.

And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister2 might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop3 queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above

20 8 Used here in its astrological sense. The ladies' eyes influence the contests, as the stars (according to astrology) influenced human events and destinies.

The music of the Lydians, a people of Asia Minor, was soft and voluptuous.

1 Profit, avail.

2 Memnon was an Ethiopian Prince famous for his dusky beauty; in this his sister presumably resembled

him.

Cassiope, who was starred, i. e., turned into the constellation Cassiopeia.

The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended:
Thee bright-haired Vesta1 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 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,

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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 demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or underground,
Whose power hath a true consent9
With planet or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, 10 or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,

Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.11

But, O sad Virgin! that thy power
Might raise Museus12 from his bower;
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,

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And made Hell grant what love did seek;

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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,

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The Cherub Contemplation;

And the mute Silence hist5 along,

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'Less Philomel will deign a song,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

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In her sweetest saddest plight,

Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear,

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke

Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont

Gently o'er the accustomed oak.

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With the Attic boy14 to hunt,

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,

But kercheft in a comely cloud,

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Most musical, most melancholy!

While rocking winds are piping loud,

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among

Or ushered with a shower still,

I woo, to hear thy even-song;

And, missing thee, I walk unseen

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When the gust hath blown his fill, Ending on the rustling leaves,

On the dry smooth-shaven green,

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To behold the wandering moon,

Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound, Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar; Or, if the air will not permit,

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Some still removèd place will fit,

Where glowing embers through the room

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,

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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.

4 Goddess of the fire-side.

Apparently an imperative, "bring silently along."

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,

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Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well: 235 Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair2

That likest thy Narcissus are?

O, if thou have

Hid them in some flowery cave,

Tell me but where,

is Concert, agreement.

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16 Stained glass windows with scenes illustrative of sacred story.

A river celebrated for its winding course (hence our verb to meander).

2 The two brothers of the singer, from whom she has been accidentally separated.

LYCIDAS1 (1638)

Listen and save!

Yet once more,2 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.5
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
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

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1 A legendary British princess, who became the goddess of the river Severn.

2 Proteus, a sea-god, who had the power of changing his shape. He had a hook (i. e. shepherd's crook) "because he was the shepherd of the sea-calves."

1 Lycidas is a lament for the death of Edward King, a young man of much promise who had been a fellowstudent of Milton at Cambridge some five years before. King was drowned while on his way to Ireland,-the ship striking a hidden rock off the Welsh coast and going down in a calm sea.

2 Milton had probably written no poetry since Comus, produced three years earlier (1634).

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3 Words favorable to the repose of the departed. Such, according to the Roman rite, were the words sit tibi terra leris, uttered by the mourner as he sprinkled the earth three times over the dead.

Milton now shadows forth the early companionship of King and himself at Cambridge. Thus the "Satyrs" and "Fauns" (34) are supposed to represent the undergraduates, and "Old Dametus (36) one of the tutors of Christ's College.

One of the mountainous heights on the Welsh coast.
Anglesey, a great center of Druidic religion.

The Dee, down which King sailed on his way from Chester. As many memories of Arthur and of the old Druidic faith were associated with the "holy Dee," it is called the "wizard," i. e. the enchanted, or magic stream.

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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 bleaked promontory. They knew not of his story;

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And sage Hippotades13 their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope14 with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

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8 The Muse herself Calliope. Orpheus was torn in pieces by the Thracian women at a Bacchanalian festival, his limbs strewn upon the plain, and his head cast into the river Hebrus.

Amaryllis-Neara. These names borrowed from the classic pastorals, simply stand for young and beautiful maidens.

10 Atropos, who cut the thread of life, was one of the Fates. Milton did not hesitate to add to or modify classic myths, when it suited his purpose.

11 Arethusa-Mincius. Rivers suggestive respectively of Greek and Latin pastoral poetry.

12 Triton.

13 Hippotades, the son of Hippotas, i. c. Eolus.

14 Panope, or Panopea, was one of the Nereids,

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