Baleful the shade of juniper; to crops

E'en harmful are the shades. Go home, full-fed,
The star of eve is rising; go, she-goats.

To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad
And brown as evening: cover me, ye pines,

Ye cedars; with innumerable boughs

Hide me."

100

Milton, Par. Lost, b. ix.

Lines 93, 4. Cardinal Wolsey speaks similarly of his devotion to the king: Shakspeare, Hen. VIII. iii. 2:

"My loyalty,

Which ever has, and ever shall be growing,
Till death, that winter, kill it."

Line 98. Cowley says the same of the yew:
"Beneath a bower for sorrow made,

Th' uncomfortable shade

Of the black yew's unlucky green,

Mixed with the mourning willow's careful grey."

The Complaint.

THE GEORGICS.

BOOK I.

WHAT may make merry corn-fields; 'neath what star
The earth to turn, Mæcenas, and to elms

To wed the vines, 'tis meet; what be the charge

Of beeves, what care in keeping of the flock;
How vast the management of thrifty bees ;-
Hence will I undertake to sing. O ye,
All-brilliant cressets of the world, who lead

Line 3.

"Or they led the vine

To wed her elm; she, spoused, about him twines
Her marriageable arms, and with him brings
Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn
His barren leaves."

Milton, Par. Lost, b. v.

Shakspeare makes Titania say beautifully of the ivy:
"Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms:
Fairies, begone; and be all ways away.

So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle,
Gently entwist, -the female ivy so

Enrings the barky fingers of the elm."

The year, as through the firmament it glides;
Liber and foodful Ceres, since the earth

Hath through your gift Chaonian mast exchanged
For the rich ear, and Acheloan draughts
Commingled with the clusters [newly] found';
And ye, of rural folk the favouring gods,
O Fauns, advance in time your foot, both Fauns
And Dryad maidens: ['tis] your gifts I sing.
And thou, O Neptune, unto whom the ground,
Struck by thy mighty mace, unbosomed first
The neighing steed; and, tenant of the lawns,
Through whom three hundred snowy bullocks browse
Ceos' luxuriant brakes; e'en thou, O Pan,
Leaving thy native forest and Lycæus' glades,
Guardian of sheep, if thy own Mænalus
Is of concern to thee, be kindly here,
O thou of Tegea; Minerva too,
Creatress of the olive; and O youth,
The indicator of the crooked plough;
And thou, Silvanus, from its root uptorn,
A tender cypress bearing; and ye gods
And goddesses, all, whose delight it be

The tilths to guard, both ye who th' infant fruits
From no seed [earthed] do foster, and ye who
Upon the planted crops the plenteous shower
From heaven send adown; and thou in chief,
Whom what assemblages of gods are soon
To have, is doubtful: whether you may list
To visit cities, Cæsar, or [to take]

The charge of lands, and thee the vasty globe

Line 16. See the fabled dispute between Neptune and Minerva,

treated by Spenser in his beautiful poem, Muiopotmos.

25. Inventrix, creatress; so repertor, creator: Æn. xii. 829.

The source of produce, and of weather lord
Receive, environing thy brows

With thy maternal myrtle; or you come

A deity of ocean measureless,

And mariners thy godhead may alone

Adore, remotest Thule be thy serf,

And thee may Tethys purchase for herself

A son-in-law with all her waves; or whether thou
Annex thyself unto the laggard months
A new [-born] constellation, where a space
Between Erigone and the next coming Claws
Is oped; e'en now for thee draws in his arms
The fiery Scorpion, and he hath resigned
A more than fair proportion of the sky :
Whate'er you'll be, (for neither Tartarus
May thee expect its monarch, nor to thee
May come so dread a lust of masterdom;
Though the Elysian fields may Greece admire,
Nor the recovered Proserpine may reck

To attend her mother;) deign an easy course,
And.patronise my venturous attempts,
And pitying with me the rural folk
Who be unknowing of the way, advance
[On thy career,] and do thou even now
Custom thyself to be invoked by vows.

In early spring, when th' icy moisture thaws
On the hoar mountains, and the crumbling clod
Unbinds itself before the western breeze,

Let now at once the bull begin for me
Beneath the deeply-sunken plough to groan,
And, fretted by the furrow, to wax bright

The share.
To the entreaties of the grasping swain,

That cereal soil at last replies

Which twice has summer, twice has winter felt;