Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen What wondrous life is this I lead! The mind, that ocean where each kind My soul into the boughs does glide; Such was the happy garden state, While man there walked without mate: After a place so pure and sweet, How well the skilful gardener drew a How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers? THE BERMUDAS. WHERE the remote Bermudas ride Thus sang they in the English boat JOHN MILTON. [1608-1674.] HYMN ON THE NATIVITY. IT was the winter wild, All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; Nature, in awe of him, Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her lusty para mour. Only with speeches fair She wooes the gentle air, For all the morning light, Or Lucifer had often warned them thence; But in their glimmering orbs did glow, Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go. And, though the shady gloom To hide her guilty front with innocent Had given day her room, snow; And on her naked shame, The sun himself withheld his wonted speed, And hid his head for shame, The saintly veil of maiden-white to As his inferior flame throw; Confounded, that her Maker's eyes ities. But he, her fears to cease, She, crowned with olive green, came Down through the turning sphere, With turtle wing the amorous clouds And, waving wide her myrtle wand, No war or battle's sound Was heard the world around: The new-enlightened world no more He saw a greater sun appear The shepherds on the lawn, Sat simply chatting in a rustic row; Was kindly come to live with them be low; Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep, Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep. When such music sweet Their hearts and ears did greet, The idle spear and shield were high up- Divinely warbled voice As never was by mortal fingers strook, hung; The hooked chariot stood Unstained with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, But peaceful was the night, Answering the stringéd noise, As all their souls in blissful rapture took : The air, such pleasure loath to lose, Nature, that heard such sound, Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region His reign of peace upon the earth began: Now was almost won, Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, The stars, with deep amaze, Bending one way their precious influ ence; And will not take their flight, To think her part was done, And that her reign had here its last She knew such harmony alone At last surrounds their sight That with long beams the shame-faced While the Creator great His constellations set, And the well-balanced world on hinges hung, And cast the dark foundations deep, Ring out, ye crystal spheres, If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let the bass of Heaven's deeporgan blow; And, with your ninefold harmony, Must redeem our loss, 37 So both himself and us to glorify: Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep, With such a horrid clang The aged earth aghast, Shall from the surface to the centre shake; When, at the world's last session, The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne. And then at last our bliss, But now begins; for, from this happy The old dragon, underground, Not half so far casts his usurpéd sway; And, wroth to see his kingdom fail, Make up full concert to the angelic symh-Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. phony. For, if such holy song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold; And speckled Vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould; And Hell itself will pass away, And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. Yea, Truth and Justice then Will down return to men, Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories Mercy will sit between, With radiant feet the tissued clouds And Heaven, as at some festival, Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall. But wisest Fate says no, This must not yet be so; The babe yet lies in smiling infancy, That on the bitter cross The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathéd spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. The lonely mountains o'er, A voice of weeping heard and loud The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures mourn with mid night plaint. In urns and altars round, And sullen Moloch, fled, His burning idol all of blackest hue: In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly king, Troop to the infernal jail, Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave; And the yellow-skirted fays Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze. But see, the Virgin blest Time is our tedious song should here have ending: Heaven's youngest-teeméd star Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp And all about the courtly stable Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable. SONNETS. ON ARRIVING AT THE AGE OF TWENTY THREE. In dismal dance about the furnace blue: How soon hath Time, the subtle thief The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste. Nor is Osiris seen In Memphian grove or green, of youth, My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom showeth. Trampling the unshowered grass with Perhaps my semblance might deceive the lowings loud; Nor can he be at rest Naught but profoundest hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrelled anthems dark The sable-stoléd sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. He feels from Judah's land The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne; Nor all the gods beside Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine; Our babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling bands control the damnéd crew. So, when the sun in bed, Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, The flocking shadows pale truth, That I to manhood am arrived so near, And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th. Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven; All is, if I have grace to use it so, ON HIS BLINDNESS. WHEN I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present |