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 grown

Three fair branches of your own;

Heaven hath timely tried their youth,

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.

The Dances being ended, the Spirit epiloguises.

Spir. To the ocean now I fly, And those happy climes that lie Where day never shuts his eye, Up in the broad fields of the sky: There I suck the liquid air

All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three,
That sing about the golden tree:
Along the crisped shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring;

The Graces, and the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Thither all their bounties bring;

There eternal Summer dwells,

And west winds, with musky wing,

About the cedared alleys fling

Nard and cassia's balmy smells.

Iris there with humid bow

Waters the odorous banks, that blow

Flowers of more mingled hue
Then her purfled scarf can show;

And drenches with Elysian dew
(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 low 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.

L'ALLEGRO.

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born.

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks.

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven ycleped Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:

Or whether (as some sager sing)

The frolic wind that breathes the spring:

Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying;

There on beds of violets blue,

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,

Filled her with thee a daughter fair,

So buxom, blithe, and debonnair.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee

Jest, and youthful jollity,

Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,

Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles

Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.

Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies.
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:

While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Sometimes walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,

And every shepherd tells his tale,

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,

While the landscape round it measures;

Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees

Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,
Are at their savoury dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round.
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid,
Dancing in the checkered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sun-shine holy-day,

Till the live-long day-light fail :
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

With stories told of many a feat,
How faery Mab the junkets eat;
She was pinched, and pulled, she said;
And he, by friar's lantern led.

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat

To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn.

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn,

That ten day-labourers could not end;

Then lies him down the lubber fiend,

And, stretched out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

And crop-full out of door he flings,

Ere the first cock his matin rings.

Thus done the tales, to bed they ereep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize