And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry,
Such sights as youthful poets dream,
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,

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
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;

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
His half-regain'd EURYDICE.

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 :
How little you bested,

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,
Or likeliest hovering dreams,

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
Such mixture was not held a stain).
Oft in glimmering bow'rs and glades

He met her, and in secret shades

Of woody IDA's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,

Sober, stedfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,

And sable stole of Cyprus 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,

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,

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,
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 bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-water'd shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;

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