Baleful the shade of juniper; to crops
E'en harmful are the shades. Go home, full-fed, The star of eve is rising; go, she-goats.
To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad And brown as evening: cover me, ye pines,
Ye cedars; with innumerable boughs
Milton, Par. Lost, b. ix.
Lines 93, 4. Cardinal Wolsey speaks similarly of his devotion to the king: Shakspeare, Hen. VIII. iii. 2:
Which ever has, and ever shall be growing, Till death, that winter, kill it."
Line 98. Cowley says the same of the yew: "Beneath a bower for sorrow made,
Th' uncomfortable shade
Of the black yew's unlucky green,
Mixed with the mourning willow's careful grey."
WHAT may make merry corn-fields; 'neath what star The earth to turn, Mæcenas, and to elms
To wed the vines, 'tis meet; what be the charge
Of beeves, what care in keeping of the flock; How vast the management of thrifty bees ;- Hence will I undertake to sing. O ye, All-brilliant cressets of the world, who lead
To wed her elm; she, spoused, about him twines Her marriageable arms, and with him brings Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn His barren leaves."
Shakspeare makes Titania say beautifully of the ivy: "Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms: Fairies, begone; and be all ways away.
So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle, Gently entwist, -the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm."
The year, as through the firmament it glides; Liber and foodful Ceres, since the earth
Hath through your gift Chaonian mast exchanged For the rich ear, and Acheloan draughts Commingled with the clusters [newly] found'; And ye, of rural folk the favouring gods, O Fauns, advance in time your foot, both Fauns And Dryad maidens: ['tis] your gifts I sing. And thou, O Neptune, unto whom the ground, Struck by thy mighty mace, unbosomed first The neighing steed; and, tenant of the lawns, Through whom three hundred snowy bullocks browse Ceos' luxuriant brakes; e'en thou, O Pan, Leaving thy native forest and Lycæus' glades, Guardian of sheep, if thy own Mænalus Is of concern to thee, be kindly here, O thou of Tegea; Minerva too, Creatress of the olive; and O youth, The indicator of the crooked plough; And thou, Silvanus, from its root uptorn, A tender cypress bearing; and ye gods And goddesses, all, whose delight it be
The tilths to guard, both ye who th' infant fruits From no seed [earthed] do foster, and ye who Upon the planted crops the plenteous shower From heaven send adown; and thou in chief, Whom what assemblages of gods are soon To have, is doubtful: whether you may list To visit cities, Cæsar, or [to take]
The charge of lands, and thee the vasty globe
Line 16. See the fabled dispute between Neptune and Minerva,
treated by Spenser in his beautiful poem, Muiopotmos.
25. Inventrix, creatress; so repertor, creator: Æn. xii. 829.
The source of produce, and of weather lord Receive, environing thy brows
With thy maternal myrtle; or you come
A deity of ocean measureless,
And mariners thy godhead may alone
Adore, remotest Thule be thy serf,
And thee may Tethys purchase for herself
A son-in-law with all her waves; or whether thou Annex thyself unto the laggard months A new [-born] constellation, where a space Between Erigone and the next coming Claws Is oped; e'en now for thee draws in his arms The fiery Scorpion, and he hath resigned A more than fair proportion of the sky : Whate'er you'll be, (for neither Tartarus May thee expect its monarch, nor to thee May come so dread a lust of masterdom; Though the Elysian fields may Greece admire, Nor the recovered Proserpine may reck
To attend her mother;) deign an easy course, And.patronise my venturous attempts, And pitying with me the rural folk Who be unknowing of the way, advance [On thy career,] and do thou even now Custom thyself to be invoked by vows.
In early spring, when th' icy moisture thaws On the hoar mountains, and the crumbling clod Unbinds itself before the western breeze,
Let now at once the bull begin for me Beneath the deeply-sunken plough to groan, And, fretted by the furrow, to wax bright
The share. To the entreaties of the grasping swain,
That cereal soil at last replies
Which twice has summer, twice has winter felt;
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