supposed to have been written, like the preceding ones, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire.

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
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.16

Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string,17
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,

So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favor my destin❜d urn,
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace to be my sable shroud:

For we were nurst upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill:
Together both, e'er the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn.
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night
Oft till the star, that rose, at evening, bright,

Tow'rds heav'n's descent had slop'd his west'ring wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danc'd; and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long

And old Damætas lov'd to hear our song.

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

Now thou art gone, and never must return!
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,
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 Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas? 18

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 wizard stream :19
Ah, me! I fondly dream,

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,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neærd's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)
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 th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life." But not the praise,”
Phoebus reply'd, and touch'd my trembling ears ;
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

'Nor in the glist'ring foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor 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 honor'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?

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 sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,

Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge

Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.

20

"Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?" Last came and last did go.?!

The pilot of the Galilean lake;

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain

(The golden opes, and iron shuts amain),

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:

"How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain,24

"Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold?

"Of other cares 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 "Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed;

"But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,

“Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;

"Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said:

"But that two-handed engine at the door

"Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."
Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,23
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells, and flowerets, of a thousand hues.

24

Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks:
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,?
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers:
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,25

The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups
with tears,
To strow the laureat hearse where Lycid lies;
For, so to interpose a little ease,

Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.-
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas,
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;

Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,

Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,

Where the great Vision of the guarded Mount28

Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold;

Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O, ye dolphins! waft the hapless youth.

Weep no more, woful Shepherds, weep no more,

· 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 ore

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of Him that walk'd the waves

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.

Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey;
He touch'd the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:

At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

6" Without the meed of some melodious tear."-Catullus uses the word in a like sense, when alluding to the elegies of Simonides in his touching expostulation with his friend, Cornificius, whom he requests to come and see him during a time of depression:

Paulum quid lubet allocutionis
Mæstius lacrymis Simonideis.

Prythee a little talk for ease, for ease,
Sad as the tears of poor Simonides.

17 66 Begin, and somewhat loudly," &c.
"Hence with denial vain," &c.

The first of these lines has a poor prosaic effect, like one of the inane mixtures of familiarity and assumed importance in the "Pindaric" writers of the age. And "hence with denial vain" is a very unnecessary piece of harshness towards the poor Muses, who surely were not disposed to ill-treat the young poet.

18 "Clos'd o'er the head," &c.—The very best image of drowning he could have chosen, especially during calm weather, both as regards sufferer and spectator. The combined sensations of darkness, of liquid enclosure, and of the final interposition of a heap of waters between life and the light of day, are those which most absorb the faculties of a drowning person. Haud insubmersus loquor.

19" Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.”—The river Dee, in Spenser's and Drayton's poetry, and old British history, is celebrated for its ominous character and its magicians.