READINGS IN POETRY.

LYCIDAS.

JOHN MILTON.

[John Milton was born 1608. At fifteen he was a pupil of St. Paul's School, London, and two years afterwards we find him at Christ College, Cambridge. At the age of twenty-one he had written his grand "Hymn on the Nativity." In 1632 he took the degree of M.A.; in 1634 his masque of "Comus " was presented at Ludlow Castle. In 1649 Milton was appointed Latin secretary to the Council of State, and he served Cromwell when he had assumed the protectorate. In 1665 "Paradise Lost" was completed, at a cottage at Chalfont, in Bucks, whither the poet had gone to escape the great plague. It was sold to Simmons, a bookseller, for 51. Of his three wives, his "unkind daughters," his blindness, and his career, never chequered by extreme poverty, it is not in accordance with the plan of this work to dilate. He died 1674.]

YET once more, O ye laure.s, 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 appear'd
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,

We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft still the star, that rose at evening bright,

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

Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long:
And old Damotas loved to hear our song.

But, oh! 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 shepherd's 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 Hebras 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 spirit 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,"

Phoebus replied, and touch'd 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 honour'd flood,
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 ?"
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 shearer's feast,

And shove away the worthy bidden guest;

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least

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 enamell'd eyes,
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,
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 laureate 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 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,
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 watery 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 walk'd 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.

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.
ALFRED TENNYSON.

[Lord Tennyson, the present poet laureate, was born in the year 1809. His principal works are "Poems," 1832-1842; "The Princess," 1847; "In Memoriam," 1850; "Maud," 1855; "Idylls of the King," 1859; and "Enoch Arden," 1865. He is considered, by common consent, the foremost poet of the age, and his works command an extensive sale.]

LADY Clara Vere de Vere, of me you shall not win renown,

You thought to break a country heart for pastime, ere you went to town.

At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired: The daughter of a hundred earls, you are not one to be desired. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, I know you proud to bear your name, Your pride is yet no mate for mine, too proud to care from whence I came.

Nor would I break for your sweet sake a heart that doats on truer charms,

A simple maiden in her flower is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere, some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is, I could not stoop to such a mind,
You sought to prove how I could love, and my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates is not more cold to you than I.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere, you put strange memories in my head,
Not thrice your branching limes have blown since I beheld young
Laurence dead.

Oh! your sweet eyes, your low replies: a great enchantress you may be ;

But there was that across his throat which you had hardly cared to see.