Now thou art gone, and never must return!

Thee, Shepherd, thee 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, 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

(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 ab

horred shears,

And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise,

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;

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
That came in Neptune's plea;
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 beaked promontory:

They knew not of his story,
And sage Hippotades their answer

brings,

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,

His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,

Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge

Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.

Ah! Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?

Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals
twain,

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain)

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake;

How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,

Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold?

Of other care they little reckoning make,

Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast,

And shove away the worthy bidden guest;

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least

That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list their lean and flashy songs

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the

And call the vales, and bid them

hither cast

Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues.

Ye valleys low, where the mild whis

pers use

Of shades, and wanton winds, and

gushing brooks,

On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,

Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,

That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,

And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,

The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,

And every flower that sad embroidery wears:

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with

tears,

To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.

For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.

Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas

Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled,

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide

Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;

Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,

Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, Where the great vision of the guarded mount

Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;

Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth,

And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.

Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more,

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with newspangled ore

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,

Where other groves, and other streams along,

With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,

And hears the unexpressive nuptial