Nymphs and shepherds, dance no more

By sandy Ladon's lilied banks;
On old Lycæus, or Cyllene hoar,
Trip no more in twilight ranks;
Though Erymanth your loss deplore,
A better soil shall give ye thanks.
From the stony Mænalus

Bring your flocks, and live with us;
Here ye shall have greater grace,
To serve the lady of this place.
Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were,
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.
Such a rural queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.

97. Ladon: A river of Arcadia. Lycæus, Cyllene, Erymanthus, and Menalus, all mountains of the same country.

106. Syrinɔ was a nymph of Arcadia and daughter of the river Ladon. Pan fell in love with her, and pursued her till she reached the river Ladon, when, thinking tɔ embrace the object of his

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love, he found his arms filled with recds. While he stood sighing at his disappointment, the wind began to agitate the reeds, which produced a low musical, sound. The god took the hint, cut seven of the reeds, and formed from them his pastoral pipe, which he called ovḍivž, syrinx, after the name of the nymph.

LYCIDAS.*

AS

LAMENT

In this Monody, the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637; and by OCCASION occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their highth. OFFERS

Prupage utterance

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; PREPARED
And, with forced fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year:
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
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and cov excuse:
So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

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* This poem first appeared in a Cambridge collection of verses on the death of Mr. Edward King, fellow of Christ's college, printed at Cambridge in a thin ɑnew, 1638. It consists of three Greek, nineteen Latin, and thirteen English ans.

Edward King, the subject of this Monody, was the son of Sir John King, knight, secretary for Ireland, under Queen Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. He was sailing from Chester to Ireland, on a visit to his friends and relations in that country, when, in calm weather, not far from the English coast, the ship, a very crazy vessel, “a fatal and perfidious bark,” struck on a rock, and suddenly sunk to the bottom with all that were on board, not one escaping, August 10, 1637. King was now only twenty-five years old: he was perhaps a native of Ireland, and at Cambridge he was distinguished for his piety, and proficiency in polite literature.

This poem, as appears by the Trinity manuscript, was written in November, 1637, when Milton was not quite twenty-nine years old.-T. WARTON.

3. I.come to pluck, &c. This is a beautiful allusion to the unripe age of his friend, in which death shattered his leaves before the mellowing year.

1. Yet once more. This has reference | but are symbolical of general poetry.-
to his poetical compositions in general, T. WARTON.
or rather to his last poem, which was
❝ Comus." He would say, "I am again,
in the midst of other studies, unexpect
edly and unwilling y called back to poe-
try; again compelled to write verses, in
consequence of the recent disastrous loss
of my shipwrecked friend,” &c. The 14. Melodious tear: the effect for the
p'ant
plants here mentioned are not as some cause, the melodious song. Sisters, the
have suspected, appropriated to elegy, | Muses: Sacred Well, IIeNcon.

11. And build the lofty rhyme: a beau tiful Latinism, condere carmen.

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill;
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,.
Oft till the star, that rose at evening bright,

Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel

And old Damotas loved to hear our song.

From the glad sound would not be absent long;

But, O, the heavy change, now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone, and never must return!

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Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,

With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,→
And all their echoes, mourn:

The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

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Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;-

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 50 Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie;
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high;

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream!

27. We drove ajeid. That is, "we drove out flocks afield.” I mention this, that Gray's echo of the passage in his Elegy, yet with another meaning, may not mislead many careless readers.

How jocund did they drive their team afield. From the regularity of his pursuits, the purity of his pleasures, his temperance, and general simplicity of life, Milton habitually became an early riser. Hence he gained an acquaintance with the beauties of the morning, which he so frequently contemplated with delight, and has therefore so repeatedly described, in all their various appearances.-T. WARTON. See Milton's own account of his morning hours, "Compendium of English Literature," page 268.

28. The sultry horn of the gray-fly, (called by naturalists the Trumpet-fly) is the sharp hum of this insect at noon, or the hottest part of the day.

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36. Damætas, a character in Virgil's third Eclogue.

40. Gadding vine. Dr. Warburton supposes that the vine is here called gadding, because, being married to the elm, like too many other wives she is fond of gadding abroad, and seeking a new associate.

45. The whole context of words in this and the four following lines is melodious and enchanting.-BRYDGES.

50. Where were ye. This burst is as magnificent as it is affecting.-BRYDGES.

52. On the steep. In the midst of this wild imagery, the tombs of the Druids, dispersed over the solitary mountains of Denbighshire, the shaggy summits of Mona, and the wizard waters of Deva, (the Dee) Milton was in his favourite track of poetry: all these, too, are in the vicinity of the Irish Sea, where Lycidas was shipwrecked, and thus they have a real connection with the poet's subjectT. WARTON.

Had ye been there-for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal Nature did lament,

When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?

Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,

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To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

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To scorn delights, and live laborious days;.
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears:
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove:
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.".

O, fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd 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

That came in Neptune's plea:

He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?

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58. Orpheus, torn in pieces by the Bac than these; nor more justly instructive chanalian women, called the rout.

67. As others use. Warton supposes that Milton here had reference to the Scotch poet Buchanan, who unbecomingly prolonged his amorous descant to graver years. Amaryllis and Neæra are two of Buchanan's lady-loves, and the golden hair of the latter makes quite a figure in his verses. In his last Elegy he raises the following extravagant fiction on the luxuriant tangles of this lady's hair. Cupid is puzzled how to subdue the icy poet. His arrows can do nothing. At length he hits upon the stratagem of cutting a golden lock from Newcra's head, while she is asleep, with which the poet is bound, and thus entangled he is delivered a prisoner to Neæra.

70. Fame is the spur. No lines have been more often cited and more popular

and inspiring. 75. Fury, Destiny.

76. But not the praise. “But the praise is not intercepted." While the poet, in the character of a shepherd, is moralizing on the uncertainty of human life, Phoebus interposes with a sublime strain, above the tone of pastoral poetry. He then in an abrupt and elliptical apos trophe, at "O fountain Arethuse," hastily recollects himself, and apologizes to his rural Muse, or in other words to Arethusa and Mincius, the celebrated stream of Bucolic song, for having so suddenly departed from pastoral allusions, and the tenor of his subject.-T. WARTON.

85. Arethuse; see note to line 31 of "Arcades." Mincius is a stream in Cisalpine Gaul, that flows into the Po, near Mantua, and is often mentioned by Virgil 91. The felon winds, the cruel winds.

And question'd every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory:
They knew not of his story;

And sage Hippotades their answer brings, -
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend sīre, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower, inscribed with woe.
Ah! who hath reft, quoth he, my dearest pledge?
Last came, and last did go,

The pilot of the Galilean lake:

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Two massy keys he bore of metals twain;

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The golden opes, the iron shuts amain:

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!

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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 learn'd aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs

94. Beaked promontory, one projecting like the beak of a bird.

96. Hippotades, a patronymic noun, applied to Aolus, the god of winds, and son of Hippotas.

99. Panope, one of the Nereids. 100. That fatal bark. The ship in which "Lycidas" was wrecked.

103. Camus, the river Cam, that flowed by Cambridge university, where Lycidas (Mr. King) was educated.

101. The hairy mantle and sedge bonnet may refer to the rushy or reedy banks of the Cam; and the figures dim, to the inCistinct and dusky streaks or sedge leaves or flags, when beginning to wither. Warton remarks that perhaps the poet himself had no very clear or determinate idea; but in obscure and mysterious expressions, leaves something to be sup rlied or explained by the reader's imagi

nation.

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the Hyacinth, said to have sprung from the blood of the youth of that name, killed by Apollo. Ovid, a favourite author with Milton, in describing this event, (Met. Lib. x. Fab. vi. line 54,) uses almost the same language:

"Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit: et, ai, ai, Flos habet inscriptum."

That is, "the God himself inscribes his own lamentations upon its leaves, and the flower has ai, ai, written upon it," or, as Pliny explains it, its veins and fibres so run as to make the figure ai, the Greek interjection of grief.

107. Dearest pledge. Children were called by the Romans pignora, “pledges.' 109. The pilot: Peter. Two massy keys: Alluding to Matt. xvi. 19.

114. Milton here animadverts on the

endowments of the church, at the same time insinuating that they were share by those only who sought the emoluments of the sacred office, to the exclusion of a learned and conscientious clergy. Thus in Paradise Lost (iv. 192:)

106. Sanguine flower. "Commentators," as Coleridge says, "have a notable trick of passing siccissimis pedibus (with the driest feet') over really difficult places," and no one has remarked upon the So clomb the first grand thief into God's fold; “flower” here alluded to. I think it is' So, since, into his church lewd hirelings climb.