And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew.

Where, perhaps, some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savoury dinner set,
Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses

Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men.

Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakspere, 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

These delights of thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

G

IL PENSEROSO.

Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy.

And if aught else great bards beside
In
sage

and solemn tunes have sung,
Of turneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.

But let

my

due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high-embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.

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
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

Lycidas. Lines 168-171.

To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

Ibid. Line 193.

For evil news rides post, while good news bates.

Samson Agonistes. Line 1538.

That dishonest victory
At Cheronxa, fatal to liberty,
Killed with report that old man eloquent.

Sonnet 10.

*

In vain doth valour bleed, While avarice and rapine share the land.

Sonnet 15.

Peace hath her victories No less renowned than war.

Sonnet 16.

A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
And airy tongues, that syllable men's names.

Comus.

Lines 204-207

* Isocrates, the celebrated orator of Greece, is here alluded to. His patriotic feelings received so severe a shock on hearing the result of the battle of Cheronæa, that he died broken-hearted, or, as some authors say, of self-starvation.

+ A glossy bower!
Of coolest foliage musical with birds,
Whose songs should syllable thy name.

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's Lady of Lyons, Act ii. Scene 1.

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night ?

Comus. Lines 221, 222.

Avenge, O Lord! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones Forget not.

Sonnet 18.*

Rivers, arise ! whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulfy Dun.

Poems on several occasions.

Poem 2.

What needs my Shakspere for his honoured bones :
The labour of an age in piléd stones ?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

Ibid. On Shakspere.

* These noble lines, from the sonnet entitled “ On the late Massacre in Piedmont,” which was written in 1655, have obtained great and deserved celebrity. It is satisfactory to know, that the poet did not write in vain in thus calling attention to the sufferings of the persecuted Protestants of the Piedmontese mountains and valleys.

My banks they are furnish'd with bees,

Whose murmur invites one to sleep ;
My grottoes are shaded with trees,
And

my
hills are white over with sheep.

A Pastoral. Part 2.

fair :

I have found out a gift for my

I have found where the wood-pigeons breed ; But let me that plunder forbear,

She will say ’t was a barbarous deed ; For he ne'er could be true, she averr’d,

Who could rob a poor bird of its young ; And I loved her the more when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue.

Ibid.

Ye shepherds! give ear to my lay,

And take no more heed of my sheep ; They have nothing to do but to stray,

I have nothing to do but to weep.