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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 dental vain,' and coy/excuse:
So may some gentle Muse'

With lucky words 'favor 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 afield; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star, that rose at evening, bright,

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Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute;

King and Milton had been designed for holy orders and the pastoral care, which gives a peculiar propriety to several passages in it.

Addison says, "that he who desires to know whether he has a true taste for history or not, should consider whether he is pleased with Livy's manner of telling a story; so, perhaps it may be said, that he who wishes to know whether he has a true taste for poetry or not, should consider whether he is highly delighted or not with the perusal of Milton's Lycidas."-J. Warton.

"Whatever stern grandeur Milton's two epics and his drama, written in his latter days, exhibit; by whatever divine invention they are created; Lycidas and Comus have a fluency, a sweetness, a melody, a youthful freshness, a dewy brightness of description, which those gigantic poems have not. The prime charm of poetry, the rapidity and the novelty, yet the natural association of beau. tiful ideas, is pre-eminently exhibited in Lycidas; and it strikes me, that there is no poem of Milton, in which the pastoral and rural imagery is so breathing, so brilliant, and so new as this."-Sir Egerton Brydges.

"I shall never cease to consider this monody as the sweet effusion of a most poetic and tender mind; entitled as well by its beautiful melody as by the frequent grandeur of its sentiments and language, to the utmost enthusiasm of admiration."-Todd.

Line 3. This is a beautiful allusion to the unripe age of his friend, in which death "shatter'd his leaves before the mellowing year."

L. 15. "The sacred well," Helicon.

L. 25. "From the regularity of his pursuits, the purity of his pleasures, his temperance, and general simplicity of life, Milton habitually became an early riser; hence he gained an acquaintance with the beauties of the morning, which he so frequently contemplated with delight, and has there fore so repeatedly described in all their various appearances."-T. Warton.

L. 27. "We drove afield,” that is, we drove our flocks afield.

I. 28. The "sultry horn,” is the sharp hum of this insect at noon.

1660-1685.]

MILTON,

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.

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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 hazel copses green,

Shall now no more be seen,

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Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

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Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,

When first the white-thorn blows;

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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.

Ay me! I fondly dream!

Had ye been there-for what could that have done?

What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, ne

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 uncessant care

To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,e.
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Nera's hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

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,"

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Line 50. "Where were ye?" "This burst is as magnificent as it is affecting.”—Sir E. Brydges. L. 58. Reference is here made to Orpheus, torn in pieces by the Bacchanalians, whose murderers are called "the rout." "Lycklas, as a poet, is here tacitly compared with Orpheus: they were both

also victims of the water."-T. Warton.

L. 70, &c. "No lines have been more often cited, and more popular than these; nor more justly

Instructive and inspiriting."-Sir Egerton Brydges.

L. 76. "But not the praise;" that is, but the praise is not intercepted. "While the poet, in the character of a shepherd, is moralizing on the uncertainty of human life, Phoebus interposes with a sublime strain, above the tone of pastoral poetry: he then, in an abrupt and elliptical apostrophe, at O fountain Arethuse; hastily recollects himself, and apologizes to his rural Muse, or in other words to Arethusa and Minclus, the celebrated streams of bucolic song, for having so suddenly departed from pastoral allusions and the tenor of his subject."-T. Warton.

MILTON.

Phœbus 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 rumor 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 honor'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 :

[CHARLES II.

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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 woc.
Ah! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?
Last came, and last did go,

The pilot of the Galilean lake;

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Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,)&

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:

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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?

Line 91. "The felon winds," that is, the cruel winds.

L. 94. "A beaked promontory" is one projecting like the beak of a bird.

L. 96. "Hippotades," a patronymic noun, the son of Hippotas, that is, Æotus.

115

L. 101. The shipwreck was occasioned not by a storm, but by the ship's being unfit for such a

navigation.

L. 103.

"Camus." This is the river Cam, on the borders of which was the University of Cambridge, where Lycidas was educated.

L. 104. The "hairy mantle" joined with the "sedge bonnet" may mean the rushy or reedy banks of the Cam; and the "figures dim" refer, it is thought, to the indistinct and dusky streaks on sedge leaves or flags when dried.

L. 109. "The pilot of the Galilean lake," the apostle Peter.

L. 114. He here animadverts on the endowments of the church, at the same time insinuating that they were shared by those only who sought the emoluments of the sacred office, to the exclusion of a learned and conscientious clergy. Thus in Paradise Lost, iv. 193, alluding to Satan, he says:—

So clomb this first grand thief into God's fold;

So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.

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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

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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;

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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 sed:
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 honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

130

135

140

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

145

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,

So, in his sixteenth Sonnet, written in 1652, he supplicates Cromwell

To save free conscience from the paw

Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.

150

Line 124. "Scrannel" is thin, lean, meagre. "A scrannel pipe of straw is contemptuously used for

Virgil's 'tenuis avena.'"-T. Warton.

L. 129. "Nothing said." By this Milton clearly alludes to those prelates and clergy of the esta blished church who enjoyed fat salaries without performing any duties: who "sheared the sheep but

did not feed them."

L. 130, 131. "In these lines our author anticipates the execution of Archbishop Laud by a 'twohanded engine,' that is, the axe; insinuating that his death would remove all grievances in religion, and complete the reformation of the church."-T. Warton. The sense of the passage is, “But there will soon be an end of these evils; the axe is at band, to take off the head of him who has been the great abettor of these corruptions of the gospel. This will be done by one stroke."

L. 133. "That shrunk thy streams," that is, that silenced my pastoral poetry. The Sicilian muse is now to return with all her store of rural imagery. "The imagery here is from the noblest

source."-Brydges.

L. 136. "Use," in the sense of to haunt, to inhabit. See Halliwell's "Dictionary of Archaic and

Provincial Words," 2 vols. 8vo.

L. 138. "Swart" is swarthy, brown. The dog-star is called the "swart-star," by turning the effee'

Into the cause.

MILTON.

To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little ease,

Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay 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 toward 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,

[CHARLES II

155

1600

165

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

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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,

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And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,

In the bless'd 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.

Line 154. "Ay me!"

180

185

"Here," Mr. Dunster observes, "the burst of grief is infinitely beautiful, when properly connected with what precedes it and to which it refers."

L. 158. L. 160.

"Monstrous world," that is, the sea, the world of monsters.

"Bellerus," the name of a Cornish giant. On the southwestern shores of Cornwall there is a stupendous pile of rock-work called the "giant's chair;" and not far from Land's End is another most romantic projection of rock called St. Michael's Mount. There was a tradition that the "Vision" of St. Michael, seated on this crag, appeared to some hermits. The sense of this line and the following, taken with the preceding, is this:-"Let every flower be strewed on the hearse where Lycidas lies, so to flatter ourselves for a moment with the notion that his corpse is present; and this, (ah me!) while the seas are wafting it here and there, whether beyond the Hebrides or near the shores

of Cornwall, &c."

L. 162. "Namancos" is marked in the early editions of Mercator's Atlas as in Gallicia, on the northwest coast of Spain, near Cape Finisterre. Bayona is the strong castle of the French, in the southwestern extremity of France, near the Pyrenees. In that same atlas this castle makes a very

conspicuous figure.

L. 163. "Here is an apostrophe to the angel Michael, seated on the guarded mount. 'Oh angel, look no longer seaward to Namancos and Bayona's hold: rather turn your eyes to another object: look homeward or landward; look towards your own coast now, and view with pity the corpse of the shipwrecked Lycidas floating thither.'"-T. Warton.

L. 181

"And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes."-Isa. xxv. 8; Rev. vii. 17.

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