*

"The next, with dirges* due, in sad array,*
Slow through the church-way path we saw
him borne:

115 Approach and read (for thou canst read) the

120

lay

*

*

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth,
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty,* and his soul sincere ; *
Heaven did a recompense as largely send :
He gave to Misery (all he had), a tear;

He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished),
a friend.

125 No further seek his merits * to disclose,
Or draw his frailties* from their dread
abode,*

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),-
The bosom of his Father and his God.

Melancholy, a gloomy state of mind.

Bounty, what he gave

away.
Sincere, truthful,
pure.

Merits, goodness.
Frailties, weak-

nesses.

Dread abode, the grave.

5

LOVE OF COUNTRY.-Scott.

BREATHES there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

*

"This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel-raptures swell:
High though his title, proud his name,
10 Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,*
The wretch, concentred * all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,*
And, doubly dying, shall go down

*

15 To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

Foreign strand, countries other than one's own native land.

Pelf, riches.

Concentred, &c., thinking of no one but himself, being selfish.

Renown, respect, honour, fame.

LYCIDAS.*-John Milton.

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) among English poets ranks next to Shakspeare. His youth was spent in long and very earnest study; and to what he thus acquired, he added still more by travelling in foreign countries. He was Latin Secretary to Oliver Cromwell, and for the last twenty-two years of his life was totally blind. Chief poems: L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, Samson Agonistes; Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, in which he has discarded rhyme, and given us the most splendid specimen of blank verse in the language.

Laurel is a symbol
of glory.

Myrtle, dedicated to
Venus, was symboli-

cal of love.

Ivy, represented last

ing friendship.
Sere, dry, faded,
withered.
Crude, unripe.
To disturb, &c., to
disturb before due

season, before the
proper time.

Welter, roll to and fro.

Meed, reward.
Melodious tear, a la-
mentation in verse.
Sisters, &c., the nine
Muses, supposed to
have lived at the foot
of Mount Olympus,

the classical abode of
the gods.
Muse, poet.
Lucky words, &c.,
with words of good

omen do the same
kindly office for me
when I am in my
grave.

Sable shroud, my dark
Opening, &c., at day-

tomb or grave.

break.

Afield to the fields.

Battening, feeding or

fattening.

*

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 wat❜ry 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 selfsame hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening * eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield,* 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,
Westering, going to Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering*

wards the west.

wheel.

*Lycidas: in this poem Milton bewails a learned friend, Edward King, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester, on the Irish Sea, 1637. The name Lycidas was adopted from the Greek poet Theocritus.

*

*

[heel

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute;
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns* with cloven
35 From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damotas loved to hear our song.

But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,
40 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. 45 As killing as the canker to the rose,

50

Canker, something
that gnaws, or eats
away.
Weanling, a lamb
newly weaned.

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 shepherds' ear.
Where were ye, nymphs,* when the remorseless Nymphs, goddesses
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 Mona* high,

55 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,

60 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
65 To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

70 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)

· 75

To scorn delights and live laborious days;

-But the fair guerdon * when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

who watched over different places.

Bards, the Druid
poets.

Mona, the Isle of
Anglesea.

Deva, the river Dee,
in olden times said

to

have been the

haunt of magicians.

Orpheus was the son of Calliope, the Muse of Epic poetry.

Hebrus (the Maritza), a river in the south of Turkey.

Guerdon, reward.

Comes the blind Fury* with the abhorred shears, Fury, Atropos, one

And slits the thin - spun life.

praise,"

of the three Fates.

"But not the

Phoebus, Apollo, the Phoebus* replied, and touch'd my trembling god of poetry.

Jove, was king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Pronounces lastly, gives a final decision, Arethuse, a celebrated

fountain near Syracuse, on the east coast of Sicily. Mincius, the river Mincio, near Mantua, where Virgil was born.

Neptune, the god of the sea.

Felon, wicked, cruel. Mishap, ill-luck, misfortune.

Doomed, condemned

to punishment. Swain, a young man.

His story, what had happened to him. Hippotades, Eolus,

ruler of the winds.

Dungeon, a close,
deep prison.
Panope, one of the

fifty sea-nymphs.
Perfidious, treach-

ears:

of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.”

80

O fountain Arethuse,* and thou honour'd flood, 85 Smooth-sliding Mincius,* crown'd 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 ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon* winds,
What hard mishap* hath doom'd* this gentle
swain?*

And question'd 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* stray'd:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatal and perfidious* bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
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?" *

66

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

66

swain,

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how

to hold

120 A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught* else the Aught, anything.

least

That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!

What recks it them?* What need they? They What recks, &c., what

are sped;

*

*

songs

straw;

And, when they list, their lean and flashy
Grate on their scrannel * pipes of wretched
125 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swollen 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:
130 But that two-handed engine at the door

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."
Return, Alpheus,* the dread voice is past,

*

does it matter them.

to

Sped, provided for. Flashy, showy, without any real value. Scrannel, producing weak screeching sound.

a

Alpheus, a stream in

be connected with
Arethusa.
Flowerets, little
flowers.

That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, Arcadia, supposed to And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 135 Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton* winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star* sparely looks;

eyes,

*

Throw hither all your quaint* enamell'd *
140 That on the green turf suck the honey'd 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 freak'd* with jet, Freaked, spotted or

145 The glowing violet,

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

*

streaked.

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, Wan, pale.
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

150 And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew 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
155 Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd,
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,
160 Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus * old,

Laureat hearse, anciently a monument to the memory of the

dead, the laurel-cov

ered bier.
Frail, weak.

Dally, delay, linger.

Hebrides, two groups
of islands on the west
of Scotland.
Bellerus, St. Michael's
Mount, Cornwall;

anciently called Bel-
lerium.