Come forth, come forth, prove all the numbers then, That make perfection up, and may absolve you men. But show thy winding ways and arts, Those softer circles are the young man's heaven, And there more orbs and planets are than seven. To know whose motion As worthy of youth's study, as devotion. Come forth, come forth! prove all the time will gain, For Nature bids the best, and never bade in vain. BEN JONSON. 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 lowbrow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou Goddess fair and free, spring, Zephyr with Aurora playing, Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, On the light fantastic toe; And if I give thee honor due, Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, Some time walking, not unseen, While the ploughman near at hand Whilst the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; And then in haste her bow'r she leaves, With Thestylis to bind the sheaves; On a sunshine holiday, 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, Warble his native wood-notes wild. ning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie From golden slumber on a bed Of Pluto, to have quite set free These delights if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee I mean to live. MILTON. Juliet. Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day, It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear: Nightly she sings on yon pomegran On the mountain-peak I marked the sage at sunset, where he mused, Forth looking on the continent of hills; While from his feet the five long granite spurs That bind the centre to the valley's side, (The spokes from this strange middle to the wheel) Stretched in the fitful torrent of the gale, Bleached on the terraces of leaden cloud And passages of light, Sierras long In archipelagoes of mountain sky, Where it went wandering all the livelong year. He spoke not, yet methought I heard him say, "All day and night the same; in sun or shade, In summer flames, and the jagged, biting knife That hardy winter splits upon the cliff, From earliest time the same. One mother and one father brought us forth Thus gazing on the summits of the days, |