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; 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, Whom God grant long to reign! CLXXXVII. LYCIDAS. YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 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 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, Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel 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 yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream; 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, |