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,
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.
As killing as the canker to the rose.

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 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,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream ;
Ah 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,

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

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?

Fame is the spur that the clear sp'rit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)

To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise.

K

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed."

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned 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 asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned 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 strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine

Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.

It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in the eclipse, and rigged 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:" 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 swain, Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold;
Of other care they little reckoning make,

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest;

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least 120
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped.
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln 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:

But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”
Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,

That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
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;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.

eyes,

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

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; Ah me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

12

Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world:
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,

Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old.
Where the great vision of the guarded mount

Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold; Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth: And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watry floor : So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky; So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, Where, other groves and other streams along, With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. There entertain him all the saints above, In solemn troops and sweet societies,

That sing, and singing, in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.

Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more:
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray,
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue :
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west, behold;

Where on the Ægean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil;
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing: there Ilissus rolls

His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his, who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next :

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand; and various-measured verse,
Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own :
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In Chorus or Iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing:
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

8. THE FIRST SIGHT OF EVE.

On she came,
Led by her heavenly maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice, nor uninformed
Of nuptial sanctity and marriage rites: