Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,

On the light fantastic toe;

30

And in thy right hand lead with thee

35

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:

40

45

While the cock, with lively din,

Through the high wood echoing shrill;
Some time walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,

The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blythe,

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures;

Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray,

70

And then in haste the bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tann'd haycock in the mead.
Sometimes, with secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound

90

To many a youth, and many a maid,

95

Dancing in the chequer'd shade;

And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,

Till the live-long daylight fail;

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

100

With stories told of many a feat,

How fairy Mab the junkets eat;

She was pinch'd, and pull'd, she said,
And he, by friar's lantern led,

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn,

That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,

And, stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep.

105

ΠΙΟ

115

Tow'red cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,

120

125

130

If Jonson's learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,

NOTE S.

1-25. Of man's, etc.

Milton begins, after the manner of Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey, by setting forth the event which is to be the 'action' of the Epic, and invoking the Muse.

2. Mortal taste-death. Apparent tautology; but mortal has here rather the force of the Latin lethalis, as in the phrase 'mortal sin.' 7. Oreb, or of Sinai-called to this day Jebel Mûsa, Arabic for Mount of Moses. The Mount of God,' Ex. xviii. 5; 'The Lord called Moses to the top of the mount, and Moses went up,' Ex. xix. 20.

·

10. Chaos-the formless void of Gen. i. The word literally signifies, like chasm, a yawning gulf, from Greek xarxa, to gape. Sion, Siloa. Sion was one of the hills of Jerusalem, the 'City of David,' the 'sweet singer of Israel.' The pool of Siloam (John viii. 7) lay between the city walls and the brook Kedron; probably the 'well Rogel' of 2 Sam. xvii. 17, and elsewhere. Isaiah, viii. 6, speaks of 'the waters of Shiloah that go softly.' 6-16. The Muse is invoked who inspired 'those frequent songs throughout the Law and Prophets, which are over all the kinds of lyric poesy incomparable.'-MILTON on Church Government.

14. No middle flight. Comp. Gray on Milton (Progress of Poesy)—

'He that rode sublime

Upon the seraph wings of ecstasy,
The secrets of the abyss to spy."

15. Aonian Mount-Helicon in Aonia or Bocotia, in Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses.

16. Rhime―i.e. poetry, which, says Milton in his Preface, 'consists in apt numbers and fit quantity of syllables, not in the jingling sound of like endings.' The measure of Paradise Lost is the heroic verse of five feet, with a pause in each line, occurring variously.

17. O Spirit. Milton had in his Church Government, written twenty years before, promised a work, 'not to be done but by devout prayer, to that Eternal Spirit who sends out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar to touch and purify the lips of those He pleases.'

24. Highth. The modern height is an anomalous form. The affix th, t, or d, signifies (1) state or action, as ruth (Lycidas, 163); (2) that which is, as gift. In this sense Milton has stealth for the thing stolen, Comus, 503.

29. Grand parents. Grand for great, as in grandfather. So, grand foes (line 122), grand peers (line 505.) So clomb this first grand thief into God's fold' (iv. 192).

89

36. What time-at what time; an old use of what as a demonstrative. 'What time I am afraid I will trust in thee,' Ps. lvi. 3. Comp. Lycidas, 28- What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn.' 48. Adamantine chains. See Jude, verse 6. Adamant (Greek, a privative, daμás, to tame) is from the same root as diamond, a form of the French diamant.

56. Baleful eyes-i.e. malicious eyes; Anglo-Saxon bealo, ruin. 'Cruel his eye' (line 604). See Comus, 255.

57. Witnessed-not saw, but bespoke, bore witness to; as in Macbeth, IV. iii.

'Which was to my belief witnessed the rather,
For that I saw the tyrant's power afoot.'

59. Ken-view; from same root as con, can, know, cunning. AngloSaxon cunnan, to know. Comp. Keats

'Some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken.'

60. Waste-waste and vast, two forms of the same word, partake of one another's meaning. Shakespeare speaks of the dead waste and middle of the night' (Hamlet); and Milton has vast excess (wasteful), Comus, 771.

・74. Centre-pole-i.e. from the lowest depth of the earth to the farthest point in the heavens, --the ancient cosmography, which

Milton adopts, making the earth the centre of the universe.
Comp. Comus, 382-'sit i' the centre.'

78. Weltering by his side. To welter is to toss or roll about. So the body of Lycidas (line 15) 'welters to the parching wind.'

81. Beelzebub Syriac for god of flies, worshipped at Ekron, but among the later Jews regarded as 'the prince of devils' (Matt. xii. 24). 'Both Beelzebub and Belial are word-caricatures for Baal, the sun' (Mr. Conway's 'Lectures on Religions').

82. Satan-Hebrew for the Enemy. First mentioned in Job i. coming among the sons of God.'

84. Beest-not a subjunctive, but the Anglo-Saxon indicative byst, from beon, to be. With be-on, comp. Latin fi-o and fui, Greek bi-os (being or life), Sanscrit bhu, to be.

97. The mind-here, and often by the poets, used for the will rather than the mens or intellect. So Gray

'Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

The unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.'

117. This empyreal substance, etc. The empyrean (ɛu, in, xp, fire) was the highest heaven which overarched the universe, and consisted of the pure element of fire. The passage means-the pure element of which we consist can never be annihilated.

118. Event-i.e. the e-ventum, final issue or outcome, not the occurrence. So used in lines 134, 624, and ii. 80.

128. Throned powers. The angelic hierarchy consisted of nine ranks, viz. Seraphim, Cherubim, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. St. Paul alludes to these in Rom. viii. 38, Eph. i. 21.

129. Embattled-formed into a battle in its obsolete sense of army. Comp. Shakespeare, King John, IV.—

'Many thousand warlike French,

That were embatteled and ranked in Kent.'