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CHAPTER XI.

JOHN MILTON. 1608-1674. (Manual, p. 187-205.)

121. FROM THE HYMN OF THE Nativity.

It was the winter wild,

While the heaven-born child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manager lies;
Nature, in awe to him,

Had doffed her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize;

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

No war, or battle's sound

Was heard the world around,

The idle spear and shield were high up hung,
The hooked chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.

But peaceful was the night,

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began:

The winds, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kissed,

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,

Who now hath quite forget to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave.

The stars, with deep amaze,

Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence;

And will not take their flight,

For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer, that often warned them thence;

But in their glimmering orbs did glow,

Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or e'er the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they than,

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below;

Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook; Divinely-warbled voice

Answering the stringéd noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took:

The air, such pleasures loath to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathéd spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;

From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent:

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

The Nymphs, in twilight shade of tangled thickets, mourn.

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

But see, the Virgin blessed

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:

Heaven's youngest-teeméd star

Hath fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending; And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

122. FROM COMUS.

SONG.

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen
Within thy aery shell,

By slow Meander's margent green
And in the violet-embroidered vale,

Where the love-lorn nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well;
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair

That likest thy Narcissus are?

O if thou have

Hid them in some flowery cave,

Tell me but where,

Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere!
So mayst thou be translated to the skies,

And give resounding grace to all heaven's harmonies.

Enter Comus.

Comus. Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven-down
Of darkness, till it smiled! I have oft heard.
My mother Circe with the sirens three,
Amid the flowery-kirtled Naiades,

Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs;
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,
And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,

And chid her barking waves into attention,

And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause:

Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,
And in sweet madness robbed it of itself;
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now. I'll speak to her,

And she shall be my queen. Hail, foreign wonder!
Whom certain these rough shades did never breed,
Unless the goddess that in rural shrine

Dwell'st here with Pan, or Sylvan: by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog

To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood.

123. FROM LYCIDAS.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 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 wizard stream.
Ay 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 uncessant 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 Neæra's hair?

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

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 abhorréd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phœbus replied, and touched 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 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."

124. FROM L'ALLEGRO.

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity,

Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,

Nods, and Becks, and wreathéd Smiles,
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;

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovéd 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-brier or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine :

While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack or the barn door
Stoutly struts his dames before.

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And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse;

Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes, with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning;
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus' self may heave his head

From golden slumber on a bed

Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto, to have quite set free

His half-regained Eurydicé.

These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

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