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,
Whilst 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 cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come; but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait,

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30

35

40

6

Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch 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 underground,
Whose power hath a true consent9
With planet or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, 10 or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,

Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.11

But, O sad Virgin! that thy power
Might raise Museus12 from his bower;
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,

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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.

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,

And made Hell grant what love did seek;

Or call up him that left half-told

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 retired Leisure,

And who had Canace to wife,

In her sweetest saddest plight,

Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke

Gently o'er the accustomed oak.

60

Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont With the Attic boy14 to hunt,

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear,

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

But kercheft in a comely cloud,

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While rocking winds are piping loud, Or ushered with a shower still,

I woo, to hear thy even-song;

When the gust hath blown his fill,

Ending on the rustling leaves,

With minute-drops from off the eaves.

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And, when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,

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.

4 Goddess of the fire-side.

Apparently an imperative, "bring silently along."

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well: 235
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair2
That likest thy Narcissus are?

And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answered have.

LYCIDAS1 (1638)

Listen and save!

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.5
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew

10

1 A legendary British princess, who became the goddess of the river Severn.

2 Proteus, a sea-god, who had the power of changing his shape. He had a hook (i. e. shepherd's crook) because he was the shepherd of the sea-calves."

1 Lycidas is a lament for the death of Edward King, a young man of much promise who had been a fellowstudent of Milton at Cambridge some five years before. King was drowned while on his way to Ireland, the ship striking a hidden rock off the Welsh coast and going down in a calm sea.

2 Milton had probably written no poetry since Comus, produced three years earlier (1634).

3 Words favorable to the repose of the departed. Such, according to the Roman rite, were the words sit tibi terra leris, uttered by the mourner as he sprinkled the earth three times over the dead.

Milton now shadows forth the early companionship of King and himself at Cambridge. Thus the "Satyrs" and "Fauns" (34) are supposed to represent the undergraduates, and "Old Dametus (36) one of the tutors of Christ's College.

One of the mountainous heights on the Welsh coast.
Anglesey, a great center of Druidic religion.

The Dee, down which King sailed on his way from Chester. As many memories of Arthur and of the old Druidic faith were associated with the "holy Dee," it is called the ". wizard," i. e. the enchanted, or magic

stream.

Smooth-sliding Mincius,11 crowned with vocal reeds,

That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,

And listens to the Herald of the Sea,12
That came in Neptune's plea.

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He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?

And questioned every gust of rugged wings That blows from off each bleaked promontory. They knew not of his story;

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And sage Hippotades1s their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

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8 The Muse herself Calliope. Orpheus was torn in pieces by the Thracian women at a Bacchanalian festival, his limbs strewn upon the plain, and his head cast into the river Hebrus.

Amaryllis-Negra. These names borrowed from the classic pastorals, simply stand for young and beautiful maidens.

10 Atropos, who cut the thread of life, was one of the Fates. Milton did not hesitate to add to or modify classic myths, when it suited his purpose.

11 Arethusa-Mincius. Rivers suggestive respectively of Greek and Latin pastoral poetry.

12 Triton.

13 Hippotades, the son of Hippotas, i. e. Eolus. 14 Panope, or Panopea, was one of the Nereids.

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain.) 19 He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,

Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! 115
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how
to hold

A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least

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15 Eclipses were considered by the ancients as out of the order of nature, and were supposed to exert a mysterious and disastrous influence.

1 The god or genius of the Cam, the stream on which Cambridge is situated. "He comes attired in a mantle of the hairy river weed that floats on the Cam; his bonnet is of the sedge of that river, which exhibits peculiar markings, something like the de de (alas! alas!) which the Greek detected on the leaves of the hyacinth, in token of the sad death of the Spartan youth from whose blood the flower had sprung" (Masson).

17 Bloody flower, i. e. the hyacinth, which Apollo caused to spring up from the blood of the beautiful youth Hyacinthus.

18 St. Peter.

19 Forcibly, with power.

20 They are sped, i. e. they are advanced in worldly prosperity.

21 Lean, thin, or harsh sounding.

22 An obscure expression. Masson supposes that it referred to the two Houses of Parliament; Newton, to the "axe that is laid unto the root of the tree.' St. Matt. iii, 10. The essential meaning is, that the end is at hand, and the avenger, with his weapon of destruction, is at the door.

23 A youthful hunter, who, changed into a river, pursued the nymph Arethusa by a channel under the sea. He overtook her, and the pursuer and pursued were united in a fountain on an island off the coast of Sicily. Alpheus being thus related to Sicily, to invoke him is to invoke the "Sicilian Muse," the muse of pastoral poetry.

The glowing violet,

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The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive

head,

And every flower that sad embroidery" wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,

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To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so, to interpose a little ease,

Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise, 28 Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding

seas

Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

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Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;29
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus30 old,
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount31
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with
ruth:

And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,

165

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

Sad embroidery, i. e., the garb of mourning.

28 An untrue fancy; the body of the drowned Lycidas never having been recovered.

The world of monsters at the bottom of the sea. 30 Lands End in Cornwall was called Bellerium by the Romans. Bellerus here does not appear to be a real personage; the name was apparently coined by Milton from that of the promontory, with the idea of raising the implication that the region was named after some one socalled.

31 St. Michael's Mount, a rocky islet near the coast of Cornwall, supposed to be guarded by the Archangel Michael. "The great vision" is St. Michael, seated on the ledge of rock called St. Michael's chair, and gazing far across the sea towards Namancos and Bayona's hold (the former being a town, the second a stronghold on the Spanish coast), i. e., looking in the direction of Spain.

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked
the waves,

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Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.

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And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.

Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,

10

It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Towards which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven,

All is, if I have grace to use it so,

As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT
(1655)

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 worshiped stocks and stones,

Forget not: in thy book record their groans

5

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

So called because Lycidas follows the elegise manner of Theocritus and Moschus, who wrote in Doric Greek.

(First printed in Phillips' Life of Milton, 1694. Written c. 1655)

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,

To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, 5 Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience, friend, to have lost them over-plied

10

In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,

Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

XXI

TO CYRIACK SKINNER

Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause, Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,

Which others at their bar so often wrench,