Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
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
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.1
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 words3 favour
And, as he passes, turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nurst upon the selfsame hill,
Fed the same flock,5 by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove a-field, 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,
from poetry until his genius should be more matured. Hence he speaks of "berries harsh and crude," or unripe. The laurels, myrtles, and ivy, perhaps, mark the poetical, affectionate, and mournful character of the composition. S me, however, refer the crudeness and immaturity to Mr. King's youth. (1) Rhyme-i. e. verse, as opposed to prose.
(2) Sisters, &c.-The muses, who haunt the fountain Hippocrene, which flows from Mount Helicon, on which there was an altar to Jupiter.
(3) Lucky words-words of benediction or blessing.
(4) We were nurst upon, &c.-i. e. we both studied at the same place. (5) Fed the same flock, &c.-All the imagery throughout this poem which represents Mr. King, or the author, as shepherds, refers to their character as students of literature, perhaps especially of classical poetry.
(6) We drove a-field-i. c. we drove our flocks a-field, or began our studies together. Having thus alluded to their studies in the morning, in the next few lines he indicates that they were carried on together throughout the day until evening.
(7) Battening-making fat.
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, thee, the woods, and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding1 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 whitethorn 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 Mona3 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,
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 incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
(1) Gadding connected with the verb to go-going about, wandering, straying. (2) Where your old bards, &c.- The Druid sepulchres in the mountains of Denbighshire are referred to here.
(3) Mona-the Isle of Anglesey.
(4) Deva-the Dee. (See note 3, p. 147.)
(5) Had ye been there, &c.-i. e. as Warton interprets-"I will suppose you had been there-but why should I suppose it-for what would that have availed?" (6) Meditate-in the Latin sense, practise. Milton here imitates Virgil (see "Ecl." i. 2):-" Silvestrem tenui Musam meditaris."
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra'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 abhorréd 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 rumour 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 Arethusé, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius,2 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,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
(2) Mincius-a river near Mantua, where Virgil was born.
(3) Hippotades-olus, the son of Hippotas, the fabulous king of the winds. (4) Panope-a sea-nymph.
(5) That shrunk, &c.-i. e. "that silenced my pastoral poetry," as Mr. Warton interprets
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use1
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star2 sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers,
Bring the rathe3 primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked 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 amarantus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strow the laureat 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;1
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,5
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos7 and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
(1) Use-i. e. frequent, inhabit.
(2) Swart-star-" The dog-star is called the swart-star, by turning the effect into the cause. Swart is swarthy, brown, &c."-Warton.
(3) Rathe-early, too soon; hence the adverb rather, sooner, before.
(4) Monstrous world-the world of monsters, the sea.
(5) Bellerus old-a fabulous giant of that name, renowned in Cornish mythology,
or a rugged cliff so named; some say the Land's End is intended.
(6) Where the great vision of the guarded mount-i. e. the apparition of St Michael, who gives name to St. Michael's Mount, which looks towards Spain, as intimated in the next line.
(7) Namancos-this place appears, Mr. Todd informs us, in old maps, as a castle on the coast of Galicia, in Spain. Some think Numantia is intended.
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 new spangled 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 song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompence, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey,
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
L'ALLEGRO.1
HENCE, loathed Melancholy!
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy:
(1) L'Allegro" The cheerful man."
The design of this and the following poem is to represent in a connected series of pictures, the most obvious images respectively associated with the cheerful and the melancholy temperament. The tone, spirit, and scenery all exquisitely combine in accomplishing the poet's purpose. "They are indeed," as Mr.
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