Good folk, for gold or hire,

But help me to a crier;

For my poor heart is run astray

After two eyes that passed this way. O yes, O yes, O yes,

If there be any man

In town or country can
Bring me my heart again,
I'll please him for his pain.

And by these marks I will you show
That only I this heart do owe:1
It is a wounded heart,
Wherein yet sticks the dart;
Every piece sore hurt throughout it;
"Faith" and "Troth" writ round about it.
It was a tame heart and a dear,
And never used to roam;

But having got this haunt,2 I fear
'Twill hardly stay at home.

For God's sake, walking by the way, 20 If you my heart do see,

Either impound it for a stray

Or send it back to me.

LOVE

GEORGE HERBERT

[This poem expresses the experience of a penitent Christian, whose soul is conceived of as a guest in the house of Divine Love. The second and third stanzas are a dialogue between guest and Host.]

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here:"

Love said, "You shall be he." "I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

L'ALLEGRO

JOHN MILTON

[The title means "The Cheerful Man," as opposed to the subject of the companion poem, "Il Penseroso," "The Sober (Reflective) Man.' From line 11 to the end the theme may be said to be Mirth, personified in Euphrosyne.]

Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus1 and blackest midnight born

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!

Find out some uncouth cell

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings

And the night raven sings;

There, under ebon shades and lowbrowed rocks

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert2 ever dwell. But come, thou goddess fair and free, In heaven yclept3 Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus, at a birth With two sister Graces more, To ivy-crownèd Bacchus bore: Or whether (as some sager sing) The frolic wind that breathes the

spring,

Zephyr, with Aurora" playing As he met her once a-Maying, There, on beds of violets ble,

20

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,

Quips and cranks6 and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek; 30
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as ye go,

On the light fantastic toe;

I Cerberus. The monster-guard of the gates of the Stygian under-world (Hades).

2 Cimmerian desert. Near Hades, supposed to be always hidden in mist.

3 yclept. Called.

4 sager. More wisely.

5 Zephyr with Aurora.

20

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast."

(1633)

Dawn.

The West Wind with the

40

50

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her and live with thee,
In unreprovèd pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-brier or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine,1
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great sun begins his state 60
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight.2
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale3
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new
pleasures

Whilst the landscape round it meas

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 weeds12 of peace high triumphs hold

120

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence,13 and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen14 oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask15 and antique pageantry;
8 rebecks. Fiddles.

9 She. The girl who tells the fairy stories; the following "he" is another narrator.

10 friar's lantern. The will-o'-the-wisp light. II goblin. Robin Goodfellow, who it was said would work for any who would set for him a bowl of cream.

12 weeds. Garments.

13 influence. Like that supposed to proceed from the stars. 14 Hymen. God of marriage.

15 mask. A musical pageant-play.

Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream. 130
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learnèd sock1 be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild;
And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs2
Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes with many a winding bout3 Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, 142

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.
(1634)

IL PENSEROSO

JOHN MILTON

150

Yet thou art higher far descended:
Thee bright-haired Vesta,12 long of yore,
To solitary Saturn13 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,

Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. 30
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure.
Sober, steadfast, and demure,

40

All in a robe of darkest grain14
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole is of cypress-lawn16
Over thy decent17 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 retirèd Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
8 fond. Foolish.

49

9 pensioners. Followers. Morpheus was god of dreams.

10 Memnon. An ancient king of Ethiopia.

11 Ethiop queen. Cassiopeia.

12 Vesta. Goddess of the hearth.

13 Saturn. A god who reigned in Mt. Iaa, Crete, but was dispossessed by his son Jove. 14 grain. Dye.

16 cypress-lawn. A thin crape. 17 decent. Modest.

15 stole. Scarf.

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

71

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among
I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And, missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,6
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still removèd place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,

Or the bellman's drowsy charm

80

To bless the doors from nightly harm.?
Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,8
With thrice great Hermes,9 or un-
sphere10

The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook 91
Her mansion in this fleshly nook,

And of11 those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or underground,

With the Attic boy22 to hunt,

But kerchieft in a comely cloud,
While rocking winds are piping loud,
Or ushered with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute-drops from off the eaves.
And, when the sun begins to fling 131
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan23 loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,

Where the rude axe with heavèd stroke

12 consent. Agreement.

13 Stories told in tragedies by Eschylus and Sophocles.

14 buskined. Tragic (the buskin being the symbol of tragedy as the sock was of comedy).

15 Musaus. A Greek poet.

16 See note on L'Allegro, line 150.

17 The reference is to Chaucer's unfinished "Squire's Tale."

18 virtuous. Powerful (magically).

19 This may refer to Spenser's Faerie Queene. 20 civil-suited. Plainly dressed (like a civilian). 21 frounced. Curled.

22 Allic boy. Cephalus,loved by Aurora, goddess of morning.

23 Sylvan. A forest god.