Or usher'd with a shower still

When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves

With minute-drops from off the eaves:
And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,

Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish eye,

While the bee with honied thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,

And the waters murmuring,

With such consort as they keep,

Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep;

And let some strange mysterious dream

Wave at his wings in airy stream

Of lively portraiture display'd,

Softly on my eyelids laid;

And, as I wake, sweet music breathe

Above, about, or underneath,

Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen Genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowèd roof,
With antick pillars, massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voic'd quire below;

In service high and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

In

He puts the Penseroso last, as a climax; because he prefers the pensive mood to the mirthful. I do not know why he spells the word in this manner. I have never seen it without the i,-Pensieroso. Florio's Dictionary the ie varies into an o,-Pensoroso; whence apparently the abbreviated form,-Pensoso.

"As thick as motes in the sunne beams.”—Chaucer.—But see

how by one word, people, a great poet improves what he borrows.

9“ Prince Memnon's sister."—It does not appear, by the ancient authors, that Memnon had a sister; but Milton wished him to have one; so here she is. It has been idly objected to Spenser, who dealt much in this kind of creation, that he had no right to add to persons and circumstances in old mythology. As

if the same poetry which saw what it did might not

see more!

10 “The cherub Contemplation.”—Learnedly called cherub, not seraph; because the cherubs were the angels of knowledge, the seraphs of love. In the celestial hierarchy, by a noble sentiment, the seraphs rank higher than the cherubs.

,,

11 “Most musical, most melancholy.”—A question has been started of late years, whether the song of the nightingale is really melancholy; whether it ought not rather to be called merry, as, in fact, Chaucer does call it. But merry, in Chaucer's time, did not mean solely what it does now; but any kind of hasty or strenuous prevalence, as "merry men,' meaning men in their heartiest and manliest condition. He speaks even of the "merry organ," meaning the church organ- the "merry organ of the mass." Coleridge, in some beautiful lines, thought fit to take the merry side, out of a notion, real or supposed, of the necessity of vindicating nature from sadness. But the question is surely very simple, one of pure association of ideas. The nightingale's song is not in itself melancholy, that is, no result of sadness on the part of the bird; but coming, as it does, in the night-time, and making us reflect, and reminding us by its very beauty of the mystery and fleetingness of all sweet things, it becomes melancholy in the finer

sense of the word, by the combined overshadowing of the hour and of thought.

12 "Like one that hath been led astray."-This calls to mind a beautiful passage about the moon, in Spenser's Epithalamium:-

Who is the same that at my window peeps?
Or who is that fair face that shines so bright?
Is it not Cynthia, she that never sleeps,

But walks about high heaven all the night?

13" Where glowing embers."— Here, also, the reader is reminded of Spenser.-See p. 124:—

A little glooming light much like a shade.

14" And may my lamp at midnight hour

Be seen."

The picturesque of the "be seen" has been much admired. Its good-nature seems to deserve no less approbation. The light is seen afar by the traveller, giving him a sense of home comfort, and, perhaps, helping to guide his way.

15 Call up him that left half told

The story of Cambuscan bold."

Chaucer, with his Squire's Tale.

But why did

Milton turn Càmbuscàn, that is, Cambus the Khan, into Cambùscan. The accent in Chaucer is never thrown on the middle syllable.

LYCIDAS.

The poet bewails the death of his young friend. and fellow-student, Edward King, of Christ's College, Cambridge, who was drowned at sea, on his way to visit his friends in Ireland. The vessel, which was in bad condition, went suddenly to the bottom, in calm weather, not far from the English coast; and all on board perished. Milton was then in his twenty-ninth year, and his friend in his twenty-fifth. The poem, with good reason, is 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 seer,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd 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,