Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. 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 So Lycidas sank low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, 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. |