'Tis still the same, altho' their airy shape

All but a quick poetic sight escape.

There Faunus and Sylvanus keep their courts,

And thither all the hornéd host resorts

To graze the ranker mead, that noble herd
On whose sublime and shady fronts is rear'd
Nature's great masterpiece, to show how soon
Great things are made, but sooner are undone.
Here have I seen the king, when great affairs
Gave leave to slacken, and unbend his cares,
Attended to the chase by all the flow'r

Of youth, whose hopes a nobler prey devour:
Pleasure with praise, and danger they would buy,
And wish a foe that would not only fly.
The stag now conscious of his fatal growth,
At once indulgent to his fear and sloth,
To some dark covert his retreat had made
Where nor man's eye nor Heaven's should invade
His soft repose; when th' unexpected sound
Of dogs and men his wakeful ear does wound.
Roused with the noise, he scarce believes his ear,
Willing to think th' illusions of his fear

Had given this false alarm, but straight his view
Confirms that more than all he fears is true.
Betrayed in all his strengths, the wood beset,
All instruments, all arts of ruin met,

He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,
His wingéd heels and then his arméd head,
With these t' avoid, with that his fate to meet;

But fear prevails, and bids him trust his feet.

So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye
Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry;
Exulting, till he finds their nobler sense
Their disproportioned speed doth recompense;
Then curses his conspiring feet, whose scent
Betrays that safety which their swiftness lent;
Then tries his friends, among the baser herd
Where he so lately was obeyed and feared
His safety seeks; the herd, unkindly wise,
Or chases him from thence, or from him flies;
Like a declining statesman, left forlorn
To his friends' pity and pursuers' scorn,
With shame remembers, while himself was one
Of the same herd, himself the same had done.
Thence to the coverts, and the conscious groves,
The scenes of his past triumphs and his loves;
Sadly surveying where he ranged alone
Prince of the soil, and all the herd his own,
And like a bold knight-errant did proclaim
Combat to all, and bore away the dame,
And taught the woods to echo to the stream
His dreadful challenge and his clashing beam;

Yet faintly now declines the fatal strife,
So much his love was dearer than his life.
Now ev'ry leaf and ev'ry moving breath
Presents a foe, and ev'ry foe a death.
Wearied, forsaken, and pursued, at last

All safety in despair of safety placed,
Courage he thence resumes, resolved to bear
All their assaults, since 'tis in vain to fear.
And now too late he wishes for the fight
That strength he wasted in ignoble flight:
But when he sees the eager chase renewed,
Himself by dogs, the dogs by men pursued,
He straight revokes his bold resolve, and more
Repents his courage than his fear before;
Finds that uncertain ways unsafest are,

And doubt a greater mischief than despair.
Then to the stream, when neither friends, nor force,
Nor speed, nor art prevail, he shapes his course;
Thinks not their rage so desperate to assay

An element more merciless than they.

But fearless they pursue, nor can the flood

Quench their dire thirst; alas! they thirst for blood.
So towards a ship the oar-finned galleys ply,
Which wanting sea to ride, or wind to fly,
Stands but to fall revenged on those that dare
Tempt the last fury of extreme despair.
So fares the stag, among th' enragéd hounds,
Repels their force, and wounds returns for wounds.
And as a hero, whom his baser foes

In troops surround, now these assails, now those,
Though prodigal of life, disdains to die

By common hands, but if he can descry
Some nobler foe approach, to him he calls,
And begs his fate, and then contented falls:
So when the king a mortal shaft lets fly
From his unerring hand, then glad to die,
Proud of the wound, to it resigns his blood,
And stains the crystal with a purple flood.

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300

310

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330

This a more innocent and happy chase,
Than when of old, but in the self-same place,
Fair Liberty pursued, and meant a prey
To lawless power, here turn'd, and stood at bay.
When in that remedy all hope was plac'd,
Which was, or should have been at least, the last.
Here' was that charter seal'd, wherein the crown
All marks of arbitrary pow'r lays down:
Tyrant and slave, those names of hate and fear,
The happier style of king and subject bear.
Happy, when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty and subjects love!
Therefore not long in force this charter stood;
Wanting that seal, it must be seal'd in blood.
The subjects arm'd, the more their princes gave,
Th' advantage only took, the more to crave,
Till kings by giving, give themselves away,
And e'en that pow'r, that should deny, betray.
"Who gives constrain'd, but his own fear reviles,
Not thank'd, but scorn'd; nor are they gifts, but spoils."
Thus kings, by grasping more than they could hold,
First made their subjects, by oppression, bold;
And popular sway, by forcing kings to give
More than was fit for subjects to receive,
Ran to the same extremes; and one excess
Made both, by striving to be greater, less.
When a calm river rais'd with sudden rains,
Or snows dissolv'd, o'erflows th' adjoining plains,
The husbandmen with high-rais'd banks secure
Their greedy hopes, and this he can endure.
But if with bays and dams they strive to force

1 At Runnymede.

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350

Cowley went from Westminster School to Tri College, Cambridge, and his marvellous preex did not foreshadow, as it sometimes does, a imanhood. He had written a play at school, a wrote plays at college. When the Civil War: broken out, in the year of the publishing of Denia "Cooper's Hill," which ends with a reference to Cowley was ejected from Cambridge, and went St. John's College, Oxford. Afterwards he went the Queen to Paris, and was active in managing cipher correspondence between King Charles and wife. In 1647 appeared his love poems under: name of "The Mistress." They are pure work imagination. He never married, and it is said: although he was once, and only once, in love, he v too shy to tell his passion. These are two pos from Cowley's "Mistress:

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

EFFIGIES

From his "Poetical Blossoms."

ABRAHAMI

is a song from "Constantia and Philetus," printed among these Blossoms, and written by Cowley at the age of twelve:--

THE CHANGE.

Love in her sunny eyes does basking play, Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair, Love does on both her lips for ever stray,

And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there: In all her outward parts Love's always seen; But, oh he never went within.

Within Love's foes, his greatest foes, abide,
Malice, Inconstancy, and Pride;

So the earth's face, trees, herbs, and flowers do d
With other beauties numberless:

But at the centre darkness is and hell;
There wicked spirits, and there the damned dve

With me, alas! quite contrary it fares;
Darkness and death lies in my weeping eyes,
Despair and paleness in my face appears,
And grief and fear, Love's greatest enemies;
But, like the Persian tyrant, Love within
Keeps his proud court, and ne'er is seen.

Oh take my heart, and by that means you'll pr
Within too stor'd enough of love:
Give me but yours, I'll by that change so thrive
That Love in all my parts shall live:
So powerful is this change, it render can,
My outside woman, and your inside man.

CONSTANTIA'S SONG.

Time fly with greater speed away,

Add feathers to thy wings,

Till thy haste in flying brings

That wished-for and expected Day.

Comfort's Sun we then shall see,

Though at first it darkened be

With dangers yet, those clouds but gone. Our Day will put his lustre on.

MY PICTURE.

Here, take my likeness with you, whilst 'tis so;

For when from hence you go,

The next sun's rising will behold

Me pale, and lean, and old.

The man who did this picture draw,

Will swear next day my face he never saw.

What joy can human things to us afford,
When we see perish thus by odd events,

Ill men and wretched accidents,

The best cause and best man that ever drew a sword ? When we see

The false Octavius and wild Antony,

God-like Brutus, conquer thee?

What can we say but thine own tragic word,

That Virtue, which had worshipped been by thee
As the most solid good, and greatest Deity,

By this fatal proof became

An idol only, and a name?
Hold, noble Brutus, and restrain

The bold voice of thy generous disdain:
These mighty gulfs are yet

Too deep for all thy judgment and thy wit.
The time's set forth already, which shall quell
Stiff Reason, when it offers to Rebel;

Which these great secrets shall unseal,
And new philosophies reveal.

A few years more, so soon hadst thou not died,
Would have confounded Human Virtue's pride,
And showed thee a God Crucified.

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It was in the memorable year of the battle of Naseby, 1645, that John Milton, then thirty-seven years old, published his first volume of collected poems, "Poems both Latin and English, by John Milton." When Charles I. came to the throne, Milton was a youth of little more than sixteen, who had been educated at St. Paul's School, and was just entering to his college at Cambridge. He had been admitted to Christ's College in February, 1625, when James I. was still living, but returned to London and did not come into residence at Cambridge until twelve days after the accession of King Charles. After five or six years of study, on his birthday, the 9th of December, 1631, the young poet wrote a sonnet that reads like his grace before the active work of life :

Find out some uncouth cell,

SONNET.

To the closing resolve Milton was true until his death. John Milton remained at Cambridge until July, 1632, when he graduated as Master of Arts, and then obtained leave from his father to join him in his retirement at Horton, near Windsor, while adding to his period of study more years-they came to be another seven years; nearly six at Horton, followed by fifteen months of foreign travel-that were to prepare him for the full use of whatever talent God might have entrusted to him. During those years he wrote his "Arcades," his "Comus," and that exquisite pair of poems, "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," written to represent the gay and grave sides of one innocent and healthy mind:

L'ALLEGRO.1

Hence loathéd Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn;

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy:

1 L'Allegro. In Gherardini's "Supplimento a' Vocabolarj Italiani" (six vols., Milan, 1852), a work designed for precise definition of the

sense in which Italian words are used, "L'Allegro" is defined as one "who has in his heart cause for contentment" ("che ha in cuore cagione di contentezza"). Since Milton designed in this poem to represent the cheerful mood of one whose "bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne," the Italian word made a more suitable title than the English word "Mirth" standing alone. When used in the poem it does not stand alone; the poem essentially consists in its limitation, "These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live."

"

The word "Mirth means originally softness. (See Note 8, page 18.)
For a like reason Melancholy, which means only the mood produced
by a state of the bile (see Note 4, page 297), could not stand alone as
title to the companion poem. But the Italian word " "Pensieroso,"
which describes a man who is grave while his mind is weighing and
considering, precisely expresses Milton's thought. The true life has
its hours of innocent light-hearted enjoyment and its hours of grave,
but not less happy, meditation. He who is never "L'Allegro," is
likely to be "Il Penseroso to but little purpose, and may know too
much of the " loathed melancholy" born of the black dog; while he who
never is "Il Penseroso," may know less of the mood of "L'Allegro"
than of the "vain deluding joys" that Milton shuts out of his picture
Each piece begins with a banning of the opposite to its companion
The loathed Melancholy ("loathed," from First-English lath,"
evil), born of darkness and the dog of hell, which is banished at the
opening of "L'Allegro," might even more fitly have been placed at
the opening of "Il Penseroso," since it is the precise opposite to that
"divinest Melancholy" of which that poem paints the pleasures. Is
like manner the "vain deluding joys, the brood of Folly" which are
banished at the opening of "Il Penseroso," might have been placed at
the opening of "L'Allegro," since they are the precise opposite to the
freedom of "unreproved pleasures" painted in that poem. It is, in-
deed, not improbable that the two poems were first so written, and that
by a fine art their openings were transposed to throw the substance of
each into more vivid relief. However that may be, it must not for s
moment be supposed that the opening of each of these poems cot
tradicts the substance of the other. There are two things praised
innocent joyousness-that which springs not from the wine-cup or
from idle frivolities of life, but from a heart open to the smile of God
on his creation; innocent thoughtfulness-that adds to life the happe
ness of quiet contemplation rested on the beauty or the wisdom of
God's works, and of those works in which man has put his intellect
to noblest use. These are the two things praised. The two con-
demned are, the sullen mood of a gloom that comes of evil, and the
light mood that causes a man to lose his foothold in life by the par
suit of empty and deluding pleasures. The two moods welcomed are
alike common to every wholesome mind, and are joined by Words-
worth when he sings in his "Excursion" of the sun--
"fixed,

And the infinite magnificence of heaven
Fixed, within reach of every human eye;
The sleepless ocean murmurs for all ears;
The vernal field infuses fresh delight

Into all hearts. Throughout the world of sense,
Even as an object is sublime or fair,
That object is laid open to the view
Without reserve or veil; and as a power
Is salutary, or an influence sweet,
Are each and all enabled to perceive

That power, that influence, by impartial law.

Gifts nobler are vouchsafed alike to all;

Reason, and with that reason smiles and tears;

Imagination, freedom in the will;

Conscience to guide and check; and death to be

Foretasted, immortality conceived
By all."

2 But come, &c. Each poem having opened with the banning of a hostile mood, proceeds to a poet's fancy of the parentage of that mood welcomed. I mark by slight breaks the successive sections that their correspondence in the pair of poems may be the more readily observed.

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 list'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,

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40

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
Bosom'd 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 Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or if the earlier season lead

To the tann'd 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 chequer'd shade;

And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,

Till the live-long daylight fail.

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,5
With stories told of many a feat,
How fairy Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he by friars' lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat

To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

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100

1 Haste thee, nymph. Here begins a third, section arising naturally from the second, painting the companions of innocent mirth. A corresponding section of the other poem paints the companions of "divinest" Melancholy.

2 To hear the lark. Here a new section begins a series of images of cheerful day with the morning song of the lark and gladness of one who is abroad under the sun. The corresponding section of the other poem begins with the nightingale's even-song a series of images that suggest thoughtfulness abroad under the moon. The passage in this section of "L'Allegro" is through the course of the day from dawn to midday, and to Corydon and Thyrsis happy in their dinner of herbs where love is; then with suggestions of happy holiday follow dances until dusk. The passage in one poem is of morning that leads on to night; in the other it is of night that ends with morning.

And crop-full out of doors he flings,

Ere the first cock his matin rings.

3 Cynosure (Greek Kuvós oupa, dog's tail), one name for the constellation of the Lesser Bear, in which is the Pole-star, to which all eyes of men on the wide seas were turned.

Corydon and Thyrsis. These names, and also that of the "neathanded Phillis," are from the seventh eclogue of Virgil. Thestylis, presently named, comes from the second eclogue :

"The sheep enjoy the coolness of the shade,
And Thestylis wild thyme and garlic beats
For harvest hinds, o'erspent with toil and heats."

(Dryden's translation.)

5 Then to the spicy nut-brown ale. The close of daylight brings the poem naturally to the next section of thought, the cheerfulness of human society when night draws in, first painted among the villagers, with their tales of wonder by the social fireside; then in the barons' halls among the knights and ladies, at the masque or wedding; or at the theatre when it can furnish something better than a vain deluding joy, that is,

"If Jonson's learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild."