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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=421404" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Lycidas</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">In this Monody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately<br>drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637;<br>and,<br>by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in<br>their height.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,<br>Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,<br>I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,<br>And with forced fingers rude<br>Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.<br>Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear<br>Compels me to disturb your season due;<br>For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,<br>Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.<br>Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew<br>Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.<br>He must not float upon his watery bier<br>Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,<br>Without the meed of some melodious tear.<br> Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well<br>That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;<br>Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.<br>Hence with denial vain and coy excuse:<br>So may some gentle Muse<br>With lucky words favour my destined urn,<br>And as he passes turn,<br>And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!<br> For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,<br>Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;<br>Together both, ere the high lawns appeared<br>Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,<br>We drove a-field, and both together heard<br>What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,<br>Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,<br>Oft till the star that rose at evening bright<br>Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.<br>Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;<br>Tempered to the oaten flute,<br>Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel<br>From the glad sound would not be absent long;<br>And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.<br> But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,<br>Now thou art gone and never must return!<br>Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,<br>With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,<br>And all their echoes, mourn.<br>The willows, and the hazel copses green,<br>Shall now no more be seen<br>Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.<br>As killing as the canker to the rose,<br>Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,<br>Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,<br>When first the white-thorn blows;<br>Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.<br> Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep<br>Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?<br>For neither were ye playing on the steep<br>Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,<br>Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,<br>Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.<br>Ay me! I fondly dream<br>RHad ye been there,S . . . for what could that have done?<br>What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,<br>The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,<br>Whom universal nature did lament,<br>When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,<br>His gory visage down the stream was sent,<br>Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?<br> Alas! what boots it with uncessant care<br>To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,<br>And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ?<br>Were it not better done, as others use,<br>To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,<br>Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?<br>Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise<br>(That last infirmity of noble mind)<br>To scorn delights and live laborious days;<br>But, the fair guerdon when we hope to find,<br>And think to burst out into sudden blaze,<br>Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,<br>And slits the thin-spun life. RBut not the praise,&quot;<br>Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears:<br>RFame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,<br>Nor in the glistering foil<br>Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,<br>But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes<br>And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;<br>As he pronounces lastly on each deed,<br>Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.&quot;<br> O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,<br>Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,<br>That strain I heard was of a higher mood.<br>But now my oat proceeds,<br>And listens to the Herald of the Sea,<br>That came in Neptune's plea.<br>He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,<br>What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?<br>And questioned every gust of rugged wings<br>That blows from off each beaked promontory.<br>They knew not of his story;<br>And sage Hippotades their answer brings,<br>That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:<br>The air was calm, and on the level brine<br>Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.<br>It was that fatal and perfidious bark,<br>Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,<br>That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.<br> Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,<br>His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,<br>Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge<br>Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.<br>Ah! who hath reft,&quot; quoth he, Rmy dearest pledge?&quot;<br>Last came, and last did go,<br>The Pilot of the Galilean Lake;<br>Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.<br>(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).<br>He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:--<br>RHow well could I have spared for thee, young swain,<br>Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,<br>Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!<br>Of other care they little reckoning make<br>Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,<br>And shove away the worthy bidden guest.<br>Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold <br> A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least<br>That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!<br>What recks it them? What need they? They are sped:<br>And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs<br>Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;<br>The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, <br>But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,<br>Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;<br>Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw<br>Daily devours apace, and nothing said.<br>But that two-handed engine at the door<br>Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.&quot;<br> Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past<br>That shrunk thy streams; return Sicilian Muse,<br>And call the vales, and bid them hither cast<br>Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.<br>Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use<br>Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,<br>On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,<br>Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,<br>That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,<br>And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.<br>Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,<br>The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,<br>The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,<br>The glowing violet,<br>The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,<br>With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,<br>And every flower that sad embroidery wears;<br>Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,<br>And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, <br>To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.<br>For so, to interpose a little ease,<br>Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise,<br>Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas<br>Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled;<br>Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,<br>Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide<br>Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;<br>Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,<br>Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,<br>Where the great Vision of the guarded mount<br>Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.<br>Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:<br>And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.<br> Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,<br>For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,<br>Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.<br>So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, <br>And yet anon repairs his drooping head,<br>And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore<br>Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:<br>So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,<br>Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, <br>Where, other groves and other streams along, <br>With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,<br>And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,<br>In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.<br>There entertain him all the Saints above,<br>In solemn troops, and sweet societies,<br>That Sing, and singing in their glory move, <br>And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.<br>Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;<br>Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,<br>In thy large recompense, and shalt be good<br>To all that wander in that perilous flood.<br> Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,<br>While the still morn went out with sandals grey:<br>He touched the tender stops of various quills,<br>With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:<br>And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,<br>And now was dropt into the western bay.<br>At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:<br>Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Milton">John Milton</a><div class=q>
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drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637;
and,
by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in
their height.


YET once more, O ye laurels, and o..."></div>
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