Dii quoque non dubitant cælo præponere sylvas,

Et sua quisque sibi numina lucus habet. Et sua quisque diu sibi numina lucus habeto,

Nec vos arboreâ, dii, precor, ite domo. Te referant miseris te, Iupiter, aurea terris

Sæcla! quid ad nimbos, aspera tela, redis? Tu saltem lentè rapidos age, Phoebe, iugales Quà potes, et sensim tempora veris eant: Brumaque productas tardè ferat hispida noctes,

Ingruat et nostro serior umbra polo! 140

The gods desert the sky for the woods of earth; each grove has its deity.

Long may each grove have its deity! Gods, desert not, I pray, your homes amid the trees. O Jove, may the golden ages bring thee back, back to this wretched earth. Why dost thou return to the clouds, thy savage armories? At least do thou, Phœbus, curb as much as may be thy rapid team, and let the days of spring pass slowly. Let it be long ere rough winter brings us its tedious nights; let the shades fall later than their wont about our pole!

The above note, given in the original editions, explains the purport of the elegy. The verse-letter of Diodati's, here referred to, was written on the thirteenth of December, 1629, and Milton's reply was probably sent soon after Christmas. It is of extreme autobiographic interest, for two reasons. It contains a noble statement of Milton's poetic creed, at a time when he felt with almost equal inten

MITTO tibi sanam non pleno ventre salutem,

Quâ tu distento fortè carere potes. At tua quid nostram prolectat Musa camo

nam,

Nec sinit optatas posse sequi tenebras? Carmine scire velis quàm te redamemque colamque;

Crede mihi vix hoc carmine scire queas. Nam neque noster amor modulis includitur arctis,

Nec venit ad claudos integer ipse pedes.

Quàm bene solennes epulas, hilaremque Decembrim,

Festaque cœlifugam quæ coluere Deum,

sity the softer and the sterner sides of the poet's vocation; and it gives an account of the Hymn on the Nativity, just completed, or perhaps still under way. The picture of Christmas merry-making in an English country-house gains a peculiar charm from the queer medium of seventeenth century Latin in which it is conveyed.

UNSURFEITED with feasting, I send you a good-health, for which your full stomach may give you need. Why do you tempt me to write verses by sending me yours? Why will you not allow my Muse to stay in the shadow she loves? You desire me to tell in verse how much I love and cherish you? Believe me, that is a thing you can scarcely hope to learn in verse of mine; my love cannot be held in the strict bonds of metre, nor comes it whole and unimpaired to feet that limp.

How well you tell of your high feastings. of your December merriment, and all the gaieties that celebrate the coming of the

heavenly One to earth! How well you tell of the joys of winter in the country, and of the French must quaffed by the jolly fireside! But why do you complain that poetry is a run-a-way from wining and dining? Song loves Bacchus, and Bacchus loves song. Apollo was not ashamed to wear the green clusters; nay, even to put the ivy of the wine-god above his own laurel. Many a time the nine Muses have mixed with the Bacchic chorus crying Euc on the Heliconian hills. Those verses which Ovid sent from the fields of Thrace were bad, because there were no feasts there

and no vineyards. What but roses and the grape-laden vine did Anacreon sing in those tiny staves of his? Teumesian Bacchus inspired Pindar's strain; each page of his breathes ardor from the drained cup, as he sings of the crash of the heavy chariot overturned, and the rider flying by, dark with the dust of the Elean race-course. The Roman lyrist drank first of the fouryear-old vintage, ere he sang so sweetly of Glycera and blond-haired Chloe. The sinews of thy genius, too, draw strength from the nobly laden table. Your Massic cups foam with a rich vein of song; you pour bottled verses straight from the jar. To this, add art, and Apollo penetrant within the inmost chambers of your heart; small wonder that such delightful verses come from you, since three gods in accord, Bacchus, Apollo, and Ceres, brought them to birth.

For you, too, the Thracian lute, goldembossed, sounds now, gently touched by a master hand. In tapestried rooms is heard the lyre, swaying with its quivering measures the feet of young girls in the dance. Let such gracious sights as this hold your Muse at gaze, and let them call back all the inspiration that dull surfeit drives away. Trust me, when the ivory keys of the virginal leap under the player's fingers, and the crowd of dancers fills the

1 A double reference is intended, to Christ and to Saturn: the Roman Saturnalia was celebrated in December.

Sæpiùs et veteri commaduisse mero. At qui bella refert, et adulto sub Iove cælum,

Heroasque pios; semideosque duces, Et nunc sancta canit superûm consulta deorum,

Nunc latrata fero regna profunda cane, Ille quidem parcè, Samii pro more magistri,

Vivat, et innocuos præbeat herba cibos; 60 Stet prope fagineo pellucida lympha catillo,

Sobriaque e puro pocula fonte bibat. Additur huic scelerisque vacans et casta iuventus,

Et rigidi mores, et sine labe manus; Qualis veste nitens sacrâ et lustralibus undis

Surgis ad infensos augur iture Deos. Hoc ritu vixisse ferunt post rapta saga

cem

Lumina Tiresian, Ogygiumque Linon, Et lare devoto profugum Calchanta, se

nemque

Orpheon edomitis sola per antra feris; 70 Sic dapis exiguus, sic rivi potor Homerus Dulichium vexit per freta longa virum, Et per monstrificam Perseiæ Phœbados aulam,

Et vada fœmineis insidiosa sonis, Perque tuas, rex ime, domos, ubi sanguine nigro

Dicitur umbrarum detinuisse greges: Diis etenim sacer est vates, divûmque sacerdos,

Spirat et occultum pectus et ora Iovem. At tu si quid agam scitabere (si modò saltem

of song stealing into your heart, penetrating your very bones with a sudden glow. From the eyes and fingers of the girlish player, Thalia will slip into your breast and possess it all.

For light elegy is the care of many gods, and calls to its numbers whom it will; Bacchus comes, and Erato, Ceres and Venus, and tender stripling Love with his rosy mother. Such poets, therefore, have a right to generous feasts and to stew full often in ancient wine. But the poet who will tell of wars, and of Heaven under adult Jove, and of pious heroes, and leaders half-divine, singing now the holy counsels of the gods above, and now the realms profound where Cerberus howls, - such a poet must live sparely, after the manner of Pythagoras, the Samian teacher. Herbs must furnish him his innocent food; let clear water in a beechen cup stand at his side, and let his drink be sober draughts from the pure spring. His youth must be chaste and void of offence; his manners strict, his hands without stain. He shall be like a priest shining in sacred vestment, washed with lustral waters, who goes up to make augury before the offended gods. In this wise, they say, the sage Tiresias lived, after his eyes were darkened; and Theban Linus, and Calchas, who fled from his doomed hearth, and Orpheus, roaming in old age through lonely caverns, quelling the wild beasts with his music. So, a spare eater and a drinker of water, Homer carried Odysseus through the long courses of the sea, through the hall of monster-making Circe, and past the shoals insidious with women's song; and through thy realms, nethermost king, where they say he held with a spell of black blood the troops of the shades. Yea, for the bard is sacred to the gods; he is their priest; mysteriously from his lips and his breast he breathes Jove.

But if you will know what I am doing, I will tell you, if indeed you think my doings

worth your concern. I am singing the King of Heaven, bringer of peace, and the fortunate days promised by the holy book; the crying of the infant God, and the stabling under a poor roof of Him who rules with his father the realms above; the starcreating heavens, the hymning of angels in the air, and the gods suddenly shattered in their own fanes. This poem I made as a birthday gift for Christ; the first light of Christmas dawn brought me the theme.

And other strains which I have piped musingly on my native reed await you; you, when I recite them to you, will be my judge.

This elegy constitutes a personal confession of an unusually intimate kind, a confession of "love at first sight" for a girl whom the poet encountered by chance in some public place in London. Though conceived in a tone of whimsical extravagance and with the conventional sentimental machinery of the pseudoclassic poet, it indubitably records a real experience, and one which is significant in the understanding of Milton's character. The unusual form of the date attached, in which the ordinal is put in place of the numeral, seems to imply that the poem was written before his

nineteenth year was completed, i.e., sometime between May 1 and December 9, 1627.

The postscript which follows the poem probably is to be taken with this elegy alone, though from the manner in which it is printed in the original editions, it may be taken to have a general application to the entire seven. It was written at a later date than the elegies to which it is appended, in some mood of strenuousness when the technical shortcomings of the verse and its occasional rather lax Ovidian tone made an apology seem necessary.

I DID not yet know thy laws, bland Aphrodite, and my heart was still free from Paphian fire. Often I spoke scorn of Cupid's arrows, those boyish darts, and chiefly scoffed, Love, at thy divinity. "Thou boy," said I, "go shoot peaceful doves; only languid battles suit so delicate a chieftain. Or make a swelling triumph, child, over a conquest of sparrows. These are trophies worthy of thy warfare. Why take up thy silly arms against mankind? That quiver of thine avails not against strong men." The Cyprian boy could not endure this (there is no god swifter to anger), and at my words the savage burned with a double fire.

It was spring, and shining over the roofs of the town, dawn had brought the Mayday; but my eyes were turned toward retreating night, and could not endure the radiance of morning. Suddenly Love stood by my bed, Love with painted wings for speed. The swaying quiver betrayed the. god where he stood; his countenance betrayed him, and the sweet menace of his eyes, and whatever else about him was boyish and lovely. So Ganymede, the Trojan lad, looks, as he brims the cups of amorous Jove in ever-during Olympus; or the boy who lured the beautiful nymphs to his kisses, Hylas, son of Thiodamas, the water-maiden's prey. Wrath was on him, but you would have deemed it an added grace; and he spoke words of threatening cruelty, full of spite. "Wretch," he said, "thou hadst been wiser to learn my power by the spectacle of others' pain; now thou shalt in thine own person prove what my arm can do. Thou shalt be numbered among those who have felt my might; thy pangs shall strengthen men's belief in me. Perhaps thou art ignorant that I, even I, subdued Apollo, made haughty by his victory over Python; to me that great god had to yield. Whene'er he thinks on Daphne, he confesses that my darts carry surer and deadlier harm than his own. The Parthian horseman, who conquers as he flees, draws not his bow more skilfully than I. The Cydonian hunter yields the palin to me, and Cephalus, who slew his wife unwittingly. Huge Orion I overcame, and the strong hand of Hercules, and Hercules's friend. Jove himself may turn his thunderbolts against me, but before they strike, my arrows have pierced the side of Jove. If thou still doubtest, my weapons will teach thee the rest better than words, my weapons, with which not lightly shall I seek thy heart. Deem not, fool, that thy Muses can succor thee, nor that the serpent of Apollo the healer can give thee any aid!" So he