Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

If I should tell the politic arts

To take and keep men's hearts,

The letters, embassies, and spies, The frowns, and smiles, and flatteries, The quarrels, tears, and perjuries,

Numberless, nameless mysteries!

And all the little lime-twigs laid

By Matchiavil the waiting-maid;
I more voluminous should grow
(Chiefly, if I like them should tell
All change of weathers that befell)
Than Holinshed or Stow.

But I will briefer with them be,

Since few of them were long with me.

An higher and a nobler strain

My present Emperess does claim,
Heleonora, first o' the name;

Whom God grant long to reign!
Abraham Cowley.

Commonwealth

CLXXXVII.

LYCIDAS.

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,

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.

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.

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 eye-lids of the Morn, We drove a-field, and both together heard What time the grey 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, oh 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 shepherds' ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless

deep

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 wizard stream;
Ay me! I fondly dream-

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,

« ForrigeFortsett »