Four Poems | Page 6

steep Atlantic stream;
And the slope sun his upward beam

Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing toward the other goal
Of his
chamber in the east.
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
Midnight
shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Braid your locks with
rosy twine,
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigour now is gone to
bed;
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sour
Severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We, that are of
purer fire,
Imitate the starry quire,
Who, in their nightly watchful
spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and
seas, with all their finny drove,
Now to the moon in wavering morrice
move;
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and
the dapper elves.
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The
wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
Their merry wakes and
pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better
sweets to prove;
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
Come, let us
our rights begin;
'T is only daylight that makes sin,
Which these
dun shades will ne'er report.
Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,

Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
Of midnight torches
burns! mysterious dame,

That ne'er art called but when the dragon
womb
Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
And makes
one blot of all the air!
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
Wherein thou
ridest with Hecat', and befriend
Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end

Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
Ere the blabbing eastern
scout,
The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
From her cabined
loop-hole peep,
And to the tell-tale Sun descry
Our concealed
solemnity.
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
In a light
fantastic round.

The Measure.
Break off, break off! I feel the different pace
Of some chaste footing
near about this ground.
Run to your shrouds within these brakes and
trees;
Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
(For so I can
distinguish by mine art)
Benighted in these woods! Now to my
charms,
And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
Be well stocked
with as fair a herd as grazed
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl

My dazzling spells into the spongy air,
Of power to cheat the eye
with blear illusion,
And give it false presentments, lest the place

And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
And put the damsel to
suspicious flight;
Which must not be, for that's against my course.
I,
under fair pretence of friendly ends,
And well-placed words of
glozing courtesy,
Baited with reasons not unplausible,
Wind me
into the easy-hearted man,
And hug him into snares. When once her
eye
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
I shall appear some
harmless villager
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
But
here she comes; I fairly step aside,
And hearken, if I may her business
hear.
The LADY enters.
LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, My best guide now.
Methought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-managed merriment,

Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose
unlettered hinds,
When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
In
wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
And thank the gods
amiss. I should be loth
To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence

Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
Shall I inform my
unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
My
brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way,
resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,

Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side

To bring me berries, or
such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left

me then when the grey-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's
weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
But where
they are, and why they came not back,
Is now the labour of my
thoughts. TTis likeliest
They had engaged their wandering steps too
far;
And envious darkness, ere they could return,
Had stole them
from me. Else, O thievish Night,
Why shouldst thou, but for some
felonious end,
In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars
That
Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
With everlasting oil to
give due light
To the misled and lonely traveller?
This is the place,
as well as I may guess,
Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth

Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear;
Yet nought but single
darkness do I find.
What might this be ? A thousand fantasies
Begin
to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning
shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names
On sands
and shores and desert wildernesses.
These thoughts may startle well,
but not astound
The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
By a
strong siding champion, Conscience.
O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith,
white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,

And thou unblemished form of Chastity!
I see ye visibly, and now
believe
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but
as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if
need were,
To keep my life and honour unassailed. . . .
Was I
deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err: there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining
on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
I cannot