IV. THE PASSION. I. EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth, In wintry solstice like the shorten'd light II. For now to sorrow must I tune my song, And set my harp to notes of saddest woe, Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long, 10 Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so, Which he for us did freely undergo: Most perfect Hero, try'd in heaviest plight Of labors huge and hard, too hard for human wight! III. He sovran Priest stooping his regal head, That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes, His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies; Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide, 20 Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethrens side. IV. These latest scenes confine my roving verse, Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things. V. Befriend me Night, best patroness of grief, Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw, And work my flatter'd fancy to belief, That Heav'n and Earth are color'd with my woe; 30 The leaves should all be black whereon I write, And letters where my tears have wash'd a wannish white. VI. See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels, In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit. 39 26 "Cremona's trump doth sound" alluding to the Christiad of Vida, a native of Cremona. VII. Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock For sure so well instructed are my tears, VIII. Or should I thence hurried on viewless wing, 50 Might think th' infection of my sorrows loud Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud. This subject the Author finding to be above the years he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinish’d. V. * ON TIME. FLY envious Time, till thou run out thy race, So little is our loss, So little is thy gain. For when as each thing bad thou hast intomb'd, Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss With an individual kiss; And joy shall overtake us as a flood, When every thing that is sincerely good And perfectly divine, With truth, and peace, and love shall ever shine Of him, t' whose happy-making sight alone 10 In these poems where no date is prefix'd, and no circumstances direct us to ascertain the time when they were compos'd, we follow the order of Milton's own editions. And before this copy of verses, it appears from the Manuscript, that the poet had written To be set on a clock-case. |