By scaly Triton's winding shell,
And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell;
By Leucothea's lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands;
By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet,
And the songs of Sirens sweet;
By dead Parthenope's dear tomb,
And fair Ligea's golden comb,
Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks
Sleeking her soft alluring locks;
By all the nymphs that nightly dance
Upon thy streams with wily glance;
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head
From thy coral-paven bed,

And bridle in thy headlong wave,

Till thou our summons answered have.

Listen and save!

880

SABRINA rises, attended by Water-nymphs, and sings.

By the rushy-fringed bank,

890

Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,

Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen
Of turkis blue, and emerald green,

That in the channel strays :

Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head,
That bends not as I tread.

Gentle swain, at thy request
I am here!

Spir. Goddess dear,

We implore thy powerful hand

To undo the charmed band

900

910

Smeared with gums of glutinous heat,

I touch with chaste palms moist and cold.
Now the spell hath lost his hold;

And I must haste ere morning hour
To wait in Amphitrite's bower.

SABRINA descends, and THE LADY rises out of her seat.

With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.

920

930

Come, Lady; while Heaven lends us grace,
Let us fly this cursed place.

Lest the sorcerer us entice
With some other new device.
Not a waste or needless sound
Till we come to holier ground.
I shall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide ·
And not many furlongs thence
Is your Father's residence.
Where this night are met in state
Many a friend to gratulate
His wished presence, and beside
All the swains that there abide
With jigs and rural dance resort.
We shall catch them at their sport,

And our sudden coming there

Will double all their mirth and cheer.

Come, let us haste; the stars grow high,

But Night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.

940

950

The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow Town, and the President's Castle: then come in Country Dancers; after them the ATTENDANT SPIRIT, with the two BROTHERS

and THE LADY.

Song.

Spir. Back, shepherds, back! Enough your play Till next sun-shine holiday.

Here be, without duck or nod,

Other trippings to be trod

Of lighter toes, and such court guise

As Mercury did first devise

With the mincing Dryades

On the lawns and on the leas.

This second Song presents them to their Father and Mother.

Noble Lord and Lady bright,

I have brought ye new delight.
Here behold so goodly grawn
Three fair branches of your own.

Heaven hath timely tried their youth,

960

970

Their faith, their patience, and their truth,

And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise,
To triumph in victorious dance
O'er sensual folly and intemperance.

(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound,
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen.
But far above, in spangled sheen,

Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced
Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,

And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.

But now my task is smoothly done: I can fly, or I can run

Quickly to the green earth's end,

Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar as soon

To the corners of the moon.
Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.

1000

ΙΟΙΟ

1020

412

LYCIDAS.

In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in their height.

not forward elcay.

cochop

YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude

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
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 words favour my destined urn,
And as he passes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, 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 grey-fly winds her sultry horn,

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star that rose at evening bright

30

20

ΙΟ

Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel,
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;

Tempered to the oaten flute

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel

From the glad sound would not be absent long;