Four Poems | Page 3

ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, COMUS, AND LYCIDAS By John
Milton

L'ALLEGRO
HENCE, loathed Melancholy,
............Of Cerberus and blackest
Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn
............'Mongst horrid
shapes, and shrieks, and sights
unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,

............Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the
night-raven sings;
............There, under ebon shades and low-browed
rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
............In dark Cimmerian desert
ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept
Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus,
at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus
bore:
Or whether (as some sager sing)
The frolic wind that breathes
the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora pIaying,
As he met her once
a-Maying,
There, on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses
washed in dew,
Filled her with thee,. a daughter fair,
So buxom,
blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest,
and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and
becks and wreathed 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 honour due,

Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In
unreproved 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-briar 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:
Oft listening how the hounds and
horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some
hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime walking,
not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the

eastern gate
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Robed in flames
and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the
ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the
milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And
every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landskip
round it measures:
Russet lawns, and fallows grey,
Where the
nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The
labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;

Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees

Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The
cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by a cottage chimney smokes

From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met
Are
at their savoury dinner set
Of herbs and other country messes,

Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
And then in haste her bower
she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier
season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes, with
secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry
bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth
and many a maid
Dancing in the chequered shade,
And young and
old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the livelong
daylight fail:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of
many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinched and
pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar's lantern led,
Tells how the
drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in
one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the
corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down, the
lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at
the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere
the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us
then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and
barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold
With store of

ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit
or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.

There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And
pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry;

Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted
stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock
be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native
wood-notes wild.
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 Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
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 likest