Some time walking not unseen
By hedge-row elms, on hillocs green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great fun begins his state,
Rob’d in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight,
While the plow-man near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his sithe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Strait mine eye hath caught new pleasures
Whilst the landskip round it measures,
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whofe barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest,
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it fees
Bosom’d high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The Cynosure of neighboring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their favory dinner set
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Theftylis to bind the sheaves ;
Or if the earlier season lead
To the tann'd haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocond rebecs found
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequer'd made;
And
young
and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holy-day,
Till the live-long day-light fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How faery Mab the junkets eat,
She was pincht and pull’d, she said,
And he by frier's lanthorn led
Tells how the drudging Goblin fwet,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flale hath thresh'd the corn,
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubbar fiend,
And stretch'd 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 lull'd adeep.
Towred 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 judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
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 Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespear, 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, with 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 ty
The hidden foul of harmony;
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heapt Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regain'd Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
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 sun-beams,
Or likeliest hovering dreams
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy !
Hail, divinelt Melancholy !
Whose faintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human fight,
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 starr’d Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauties' praise above
The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended :
Yet thou art higher far descended,
Thee bright-hair'd Vefta 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, stedfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkeft grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And fable 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 fitting in thine eyes :
There held in holy paflion ftill,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a fad 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
Ay round about Jove's altar fing:
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
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