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The clouds in thousand liveries dight,
While the plowman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower wets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst 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 brook 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 Phyllis 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 chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday;

Till the live-long daylight fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a fe it,
How fairy Mab the junkets eat,
She was pinched and pulled, she said,
And he, by friars, 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 had threshed the corn
That ten day labourers could not end;
Then lays 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 doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
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 adjudge the prize,
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear

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In saffron robe, with taper clear,
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 Johnson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, 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 of 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 heaped Elysian flowers, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto to have quite set free

His half-regained Eurydice.

These delights, if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

- 71

IL PENSEROSO.

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 sunbeams;
Or likest 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 starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended,
Thee bright haired 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 bowers 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, steadfast, 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 deigu a song.
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er the accustomed oak;

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