Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout
With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless :
But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial sirens' harmony,
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie,
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear;
And yet such musick worthiest were to blaze
The peerless highth of her immortal praise,
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,
If my inferiour hand or voice could hit
Inimitable sounds: yet, as we go,
Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show,
I will assay, her worth to celebrate,

And so attend ye toward her glittering state;
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem.

II. SONG.

O'er the smooth enamell'd green
Where no print of step hath been,
Follow me, as I sing,

And touch the warbled string,

62. Then listen I, &c. This is Plato's system. Fate, or Necessity, holds a spindle of adamant; and, with her three daughters (Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos) who handle the vital web wound about the spindle, she conducts or turns the heavenly bodies. Nine Muses, or Syrens, sit on the summit of the spheres, which, in their revolutions, produce the most ravishing musical harmony. To this harmony the three daughters of Necessity perpetually sing in correspondent tones. In the mean time the adamantine spindle, which is placed in the lap or on the knees of Necessity, and on which the fate of men and gods is wound, is also revolved. This MUSIC OF THE SPHERES, proceeding from the rapid motion of the heavens, is so loud, various, and sweet, as to exceed all aptitude or proportion of the human ear, and therefore is not heard by men. Moreover, this spherical music consists of eight unisonous melodies; the ninth is a concentration of all the rest, or a diapason of all those eight

melodies; which diapason or concentus the nine Syrens sing or address to the Supreme Being. This last circumstance illustrates, or rather explains the sixth, seventh, and eighth lines of the "Ode at a Solemn Music:"

That undisturbed song of pure concent, &c. Milton, full of these Platonic ideas, has here a reference to this consummate or concentual song of the ninth sphere, which is undisturbed and pure, that is unalloyed and perfect. The Platonism is here, however, in some degree Christianized.-T. WARTON.

81. Glittering state. The Nymphs and Shepherds are here directed by the Genius to look and advance towards a glittering state, or canopy, in the midst of the stage, in which the Countess of Derby was placed as a Rural Queen. It does not appear that the second song, which here immediately follows, was now sung. Some machinery or other matter inter vened.-T. WARTON

LYCIDAS.*

In this Monody, the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637; and by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their highth.

X

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,

A 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.

MOSES

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

So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

10

15

20

This poem first appeared in a Cambridge collection of verses on the death of Mr. Edward King, fellow of Christ's college, printed at Cambridge in a thin quarto, 1638. It consists of three Greek, nineteen Latin, and thirteen English poems.

Edward King, the subject of this Monody, was the son of Sir John King, knight, secretary for Ireland, under Queen Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. He was sailing from Chester to Ireland, on a visit to his friends and relations in that country, when, in calm weather, not far from the English coast, the ship, a very crazy vessel, “a fatal and perfidious bark," struck on a rock, and suddenly sunk to the bottom with all that were on board, not one escaping, August 10, 1637. King was now only twenty-five years old: he was perhaps a native of Ireland, and at Cambridge he was distinguished for his piety, and proficiency in polite literature.

This poem, as appears by the Trinity manuscript, was written in November, 1637, when Milton was not quite twenty-nine years old.-T. WARTON.

3. I come to pluck, &c. This is a beantiful allusion to the unripe age of his friend, in which death shattered his leaves before the mellowing year.

1. Yet once more. This has reference | but are symbolical of general poetry.to his poetical compositions in general, T. WARTON. or rather to his last poem, which was "Comus." He would say, "I am again, in the midst of other studies, unexpect edly and unwilling y called back to poetry; again compel.ed to write verses, in consequence of the recent disastrous loss of my shipwrecked friend," &c. The plants here mentioned are not as some have suspected, appropriated to elegy,

11. And build the lofty rhyme: a beau tiful Latinism, condere carmen.

14. Melodious tear: the effect for the cause, the melodious song. Sisters, the Muses: Sacred Well, Helicon.

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill;
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star, that rose at evening bright,

Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel,
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel

From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damotas loved 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.

25

30

35

40

45

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 50
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 wisard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream!

27. We drove afield. That is, "we drove our flocks afield." I mention this, that Gray's echo of the passage in his Elegy, yet with another meaning, may not mislead many careless readers.

How jocund did they drive their team afield. From the regularity of his pursuits, the purity of his pleasures, his temperance, and general simplicity of life, Milton habitually became an early riser. Hence he gained an acquaintance with the beauties of the morning, which he so frequently contemplated with delight, and has therefore so repeatedly described, in all their various appearances.-T. WARTON. See Milton's own account of his morning hours, "Compendium of English Literature," page 268.

28. The sultry horn of the gray-fly, (called by naturalists the Trumpet-fly) is the sharp hum of this insect at noon, or the hottest part of the day.

55

36. Damætas, a character in Virgil's third Eclogue.

40. Gadding vine. Dr. Warburton supposes that the vine is here called gadding, because, being married to the elm, like too many other wives she is fond of gadding abroad, and seeking a new associate.

45. The whole context of words in this and the four following lines is melodious and enchanting.-BRYDGES.

50. Where were ye. This burst is as magnificent as it is affecting.-BRYDGES.

52. On the steep. In the midst of this wild imagery, the tombs of the Druids, dispersed over the solitary mountains of Denbighshire, the shaggy summits of Mona, and the wizard waters of Deva, (the Dee) Milton was in his favourite track of poetry: all these, too, are in the vicinity of the Irish Sea, where Lycidas was shipwrecked, and thus they have a real connection with the poet's subjectT. WARTON.

Birmi

Nymphr

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 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 abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and touch'd 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 rumour 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 honour'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?

58. Orpheus, torn in pieces by the Bacchanalian women, called the rout.

67. As others use. Warton supposes that Milton here had reference to the Scotch poet Buchanan, who unbecomingly prolonged his amorous descant to graver years. Amaryllis and Neæra are two of Buchanan's lady-loves, and the golden hair of the latter makes quite a figure in his verses. In his last Elegy he raises the following extravagant fiction on the luxuriant tangles of this lady's hair. Cupid is puzzled how to subdue the icy poet. His arrows can do nothing. At length he hits upon the stratagem of cutting a golden lock from Neera's head, while she is asleep, with which the poet is bound, and thus entangled he is delivered a prisoner to Neæra, 70. Fame is the spur. No lines have been more often cited and more popular

than these; nor more justly instructive and inspiring. 75. Fury, Destiny.

76. But not the praise. "But the praise is not intercepted." While the poet, in the character of a shepherd, is moralizing on the uncertainty of human life, Phoebus interposes with a sublime strain, above the tone of pastoral poetry. He then in an abrupt and elliptical apostrophe, at "O fountain Arethuse," has tily recollects himself, and apologizes to his rural Muse, or in other words to Are thusa and Mincius, the celebratel streams of Bucolic song, for having so suddenly departed from pastoral allusions, and the tenor of his subject.-T. WARTON.

85. Arethuse; see note to line 31 of "Arcades." Mincius is a stream in Cisalpine Gaul, that flows into the Po, near Mantua, and is often mentioned by Virgil 91. The felon winds, the cruel winds.