And pomp, and feast, and revelry, If JONSON's learned sock be on, Or sweetest SHAKSPEARE, 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 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The hidden soul of harmony; That ORPHEUs' self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of PLUTO, to have quite set free These delights if thou canst give, MIRTH, with thee I mean to live. IL PENSEROSO. BY MILTON, HENCE vain deluding joys, The brood of Folly without father bred : Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, The fickle pensioners of MORPHEUS' train. But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy! Hail, divinest MELANCHOLY! Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, And therefore to our weaker view O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue: Black, but such as in esteem Prince MEMNON's sister might beseem, Or that starr'd Ethiop Queen that strove To set her beauties' praise above The Sea-Nymphs, and their pow'rs offended: Yet thou art higher far descended, Thee bright-hair'd VESTA long of yore To solitary SATURN bore; His daughter she (in SATURN's reign He met her, and in secret shades Of woody IDA's inmost grove, Sober, stedfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, And sable stole of Cyprus lawn, With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Aye round about Jove's altar sing: That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; The cherub CONTEMPLATION; And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will deign a song, In her sweetest, saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of night, While CYNTHIA checks her dragon yoke, Gently o'er th' accustom'd oak; Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy; Thee, chauntress, oft, the woods among, I woo to hear thy even-song;' And, missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wandering moon, Like one that had been led astray And oft, as if her head she bow'd, |