Hence vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly, without father bred!
How little you bestead,
Or fill the fixÈd 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 sunbeams.
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
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 starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended;
Yet thou art higher far descended;
Thee bright-haired Vesta, 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, steadfast, and demure
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train
And sable stole of cyprus lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commÈrcing 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;
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheelÈd throne,
The cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er the accustomed oak;
—Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy;
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,
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, removed 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,
To bless the doors from nightly harm.
Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen on some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook;
And of those demons that are found
In fire air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet, or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.
But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musaeus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made Hell grant what Love did seek!
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife
That owned the virtuous ring and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar king did ride;
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Thus Night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited Morn appear.
Not tricked and frounced as she was wont
With the Attic Boy to hunt,
But kerchiefed 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
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To archÈd walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe, with heavÈd stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There in close covert by some brook
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from Day's garish eye,
While the bee with honeyed thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,
With such concert as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep:
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid:
And as I wake sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen Genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail,
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage.
The hairy gown and mossy cell
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old Experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

MILTON.

[Notes: Il Penscioso = the thoughtful man.

Bestead = help, stand in good stead.

Fond = foolish; its old meaning.

Pensioners. A word taken from the name of Elizabeth's body-guard. Compare "the cowslips tall her pensioners be" ('Midsummer Night's Dream').

Prince Memnon, of Ethiopia, fairest of warriors, slain by Achilles (Homer's Odyssey, Book xi.). His sister was Hemora.

Starred Ethiop Queen = Cassiope, wife of King Cepheus, who was placed among the stars.

Sea-nymphs = Nereids.

Vesta_, the Goddess of the hearth; here for Retirement. Saturn, as having introduced, according to the mythology, civilization, here stands for culture.

Commercing = holding communion with. Notice the accentuation.

Forget thyself to marble = forget thyself till thou are still and silent as marble.

Hist along = bring along with a hush. Hist is connected with hush.

Philomel = the nightingale.

Cynthia = the moon.

Dragon yoke. Compare "Night's swift dragons," ('Midsummer Night's Dream').

Removed place = remote or retired place. Compare "some removed ground" in 'Hamlet.'

Nightly = by night. Sometimes it means "every night successively."

Thrice-great Hermes, a translation of Hermes Trismegistus, a fabulous king of Egypt, held to be the inventor of Alchemy and Astronomy.

Unsphere, draw from his sphere or station.

The immortal mind. Plato treats of the immortality of the soul chiefly in the Phaedo. The demon, with Socrates, is the attendant genius of an individual; with Plato it is more general; and the assigning the demons to the four elements is a notion of the later Platonists.

Sceptered pall = royal robe.

Presenting Thebes, &c. These lines represent the subjects of tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the great tragic poets of Athens.

Musaeus, here for some bard of the distant past, generally. Musaeus, in mythology, is a bard of Thrace, and son of Orpheus.

Half-told the story of Cambuscan bold. The Squire's Tale in Chaucer, which is broken off in the middle.

Camball, Cambuscan's son. Algarsife and CanacÉ, his wife and daughter.

Frounced. Used of hair twisted and curled.

The Attic Boy = Cephalus, loved by Eos, the Morning.

A shower still = a soft shower.

Sylvan = Pan or Sylvanus.

Cloister's pale = cloister's enclosure.

Massy proof. Massive and proof against the weight above them.]

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