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Time is our tedious song should here have ending: Heaven's youngest-teemed star

Hath fix'd her polish'd car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending. And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harness'd angels sit, in order serviceable.

THE PASSION.

EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth,
Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,
And joyous news of heavenly infant's birth,
My muse with angels did divide to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

In wintery solstice, like the shorten'd light,
Soon swallow'd up in dark, and long outliving night.
For now to sorrow must I tune my song,

And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,
Which on our dearest Lord did seize, ere long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so,
Which he, for us, did freely undergo :

Most perfect hero, tried in heaviest plight

Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight!
He, sovereign priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshy tabernacle entered,

His starry front low-roof'd, beneath the skies ;
O what a mask was there, what a disguise!

Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,
Then lies him meekly down, fast by his brethren's side.
These latest scenes confine my roving verse;
To this horizon is my Phoebus bound:
His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings, other where are found;
Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound;
Me softer airs befit, and softer strings

Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.
Befriend me, Night, best patroness of grief,
Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flatter'd fancy to belief,

That Heaven and earth are colour'd with my woe;
My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

The leaves should all be black whereon I write, [white; And letters, where my tears have wash'd, a wannish

See, see the chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirl'd the prophet up at Chebar flood,
My spirit some transporting cherub feels,
To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit,

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.
Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock,
That was the casket of Heaven's richest store,
And here, though grief my feeble hands up lock,
Yet on the soften'd quarry would I score
My plaining verse, as lively as before;

For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in order'd characters.
Or should I thence hurried, on viewless wing,
Take up a weeping, on the mountains wild,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild,
And I, for grief is easily beguiled,

Might think the infection of my sorrows loud Had got a race of mourners, on some pregnant cloud. This subject the Author finding to be above the years he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.

UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

YE flaming powers, and winged warriors bright
That erst, with music, and triumphant song,
First heard by happy watchful shepherds' ear
So sweetly sung your joy, the clouds along,
Through the soft silence of the listening night,
Now mourn; and if, sad share with us to bear,
Your fiery essence can distil no tear,
Burn in your sighs, and borrow
Seas, wept from our deep sorrow:
He, who, with all Heaven's heraldry, whilere
Enter'd the world, now bleeds to give us ease;

Alas, how soon our sin

Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize!

O, more exceeding love or law more just?
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!

For we, by rightful doom, remediless,
Were lost in death, till he, that dwelt above,
Hgh throned in secret bliss, for us, frail dust,
Emptied his glory, even to nakedness:

And that great covenant, which we still transgress,
Entirely satisfied,

And the full wrath beside

Of vengeful justice, bore for our excess;
And seals obedience first, with wounding smart,
This day, but O! ere long,

Huge pangs and strong

Will pierce more near his heart.

ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT,

Dying of a Cough.*

O FAIREST flower, no sooner blown but blasted! Soft silken primrose, fading timelessly, Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst outlasted Bleak Winter's force, that made thy blossom dry; For he, being amorous, on that lovely dye,

That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss ; But kill'd, alas, and then bewail'd his fatal bliss.

For since grim Aquilo, his charioteer,

By boisterous rape the Athenian damsel got,
He thought it touch'd his deity full near,
If likewise he some fair one wedded not;
Thereby to wipe away the infamous blot

Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld, [held. Which, 'mongst the wanton gods, a foul reproach was

So, mounting up in icy-pearled car,

Through middle empire of the freezing air,
He wander'd long, till thee he spied from far:
There ended was his quest, there ceased his care;
Down he descended, from his snow-soft chair,

But, all unwares, with his cold-kind embrace, Unhoused thy virgin soul from her fair biding place.

Yet art thou not inglorious in thy fate;

For so Apollo, with unweeting hand,

• Written in 1625, and first inserted in edition 1673. He was now seventeen.-Warton.

Whilom did slay his dearly-loved mate,
Young Hyacinth, born on Eurotas' strand,
Young Hyacinth, the pride of Spartan land:
But then transform'd him to a purple flower :
Alack that so to change thee Winter had no power.

Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead,

Or that thy corse corrupts in earth's dark womb;
Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed,
Hid from the world, in low-delved tomb;
Could Heaven, for pity, thee so strictly doom?
Oh no! for something in thy face did shine,
Above mortality, that show'd thou was divine.
Resolve me then, oh soul most surely bless'd,
If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear,
Tell me, bright spirit, where'er thou hoverest,
Whether above that high first-moving sphere,
Or in the Elysian fields, if such there were,

O say me true, if thou wert mortal wight,
And why, from us so quickly, thou didst take thy flight.
Wert thou some star, which, from the ruin'd roof
Of shaked Olimpus, by mischance didst fall;
Which careful Jove, in nature's true behoof,
Took up, and in fit place did reinstall?
Or did of late earth's sons besiege the wall

Of sheeny Heaven, & thou some goddess fled Amongst us, here below, to hide thy nectar'd head?

Or wert thou that just maid, who, once before,
Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth,
And camest again to visit us once more?
Or wert thou that sweet-smiling youth?

Or that crown'd matron sage, white-rob'd Truth?
Or any other of that heavenly brood, [good?
Let down in cloudy throne, to do the world some
Or wert thou of the golden-winged host,
Who, having clad thyself in human weed,
To earth, from thy prefixed seat, didst post,
And after short abode fly back with speed,
As if to show what creatures Heaven doth breed,
Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire,

To scorn the sordid world, and unto Heaven aspire ?

But oh, why didst thou not stay here below,
To bless us with thy heaven-loved innocence,
To slake his wrath whom sin hath made our foe,

To turn swift-rushing black perdition hence,
Or, drive away the slaughtering pestilence,

To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart?
But thou canst best perform that office where thou art.
Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false-imagined loss cease to lament,
And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild;
Think what a present thou to God hast sent,
And render him with patience what he lent;

This if thou do, he will an offspring give, [to live. That, till the world's last end, shall make thy name

ON TIME.*

FLY, envious Time, till thou run out thy race;
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;

So little is our loss,

So little is thy gain.

For when, as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd
And last of all thy greedy self consumed,

Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss,

With an individual kiss;

And Joy shall overtake us, as a flood,

When every thing that is sincerely good,

And perfectly divine,

With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine,
About the supreme throne

Of Him, to whose happy-making sight, alone,
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this earthly grossness quit,

Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, [O Time!
Triumphing over Death and Chance, and thee,

AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.

BLESS'D pair of Syrens, pledges of Heaven's joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mix'd power employ,
Dead things, with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And, to our high-raised phantasy, present
That undisturbed song of pure consent,

* In Milton's manuscript, written with his own hand, vol. 8. the title is, "On Time. To be set on a clock-case."

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