With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that ty

The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed

Of heapt Elysian flowers, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regain'd Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

XIV.

IL PENSEROSO.

HENCE vain deluding joys,

The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys? Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, Or likeliest hovering dreams

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus train.

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But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,

Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'er-laid with black, staid wisdom's hue;
Black, but such as in esteem

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauties praise above

The Sea-Nymphs, and their pow'rs offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended,

Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she (in Saturn's reign ;
Such mixture was not held a stain.)
Oft in glimmering bow'rs and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, stedfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of Cyprus lawn,

19. "that starr'd Ethiop queen"....Cassiope, wife of Cepheus.

Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gate,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till

With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast:

And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,

Spare Fast, that oft with Gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring

Ay round about Jove's altar sing:
And add to these retired Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The Cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song,
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er th' accustom'd oak;

Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee chauntress oft the woods among

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Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

The