Come forth, come forth, prove all the numbers then, That make perfection up, and may absolve you men. But show thy winding ways and arts, Those softer circles are the young man's heaven, And there more orbs and planets are than seven. To know whose motion As worthy of youth's study, as devotion. Come forth, come forth! prove all the time will gain, For Nature bids the best, and never bade in vain. BEN JONSON. L'ALLEGRO. HENCE, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born! In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There under ebon shades, and lowbrow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever But come, thou Goddess fair and free, spring, Zephyr with Aurora playing, Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, On the light fantastic toe; And if I give thee honor due, Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, Some time walking, not unseen, While the ploughman near at hand Whilst the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees And then in haste her bow'r she leaves, With Thestylis to bind the sheaves; On a sunshine holiday, Of wit, or arms, while both contend To win her grace whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, Warble his native wood-notes wild, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie From golden slumber on a bed ONCE we built our fortress where you see Yon group of spruce-trees sidewise on the line Where the horizon to the eastward bounds, A point selected by sagacious art, Where all at once we viewed the Vermont hills, And the long outlines of the mountain-ridge, Ever-renewing, hour. changeful every Strange, a few cubits raised above the plain, And a few tables of resistless stone Spread round us, with that rich delightful air, Draping high altars in cerulean space, Could thus enchant the being that we are! Those altars, where the airy element Flows o'er in new perfection, and reveals Its constant lapsing (never stillness all), As a mother's kiss, touching the bright spruce-foliage; And in her wise distilment the soft rain, Trickling below the sphagnum that o'erlays The plateau's slope, is led to the ravine, And SO electrified by her pure breath, As if in truth the living water famed Recorded in John's mythus, who first dashed Ideal baptism on Jordan's shore. AND here the hermit sat, and told his beads, And stroked his flowing locks, red as the fire, Summed up his tale of moon and sun and star: "How blest are we," he deemed, "who so comprise The essence of the whole, and of ourselves, As in a Venice flask of lucent shape, Ornate of gilt Arabic, and inscribed With Suras from Time's Koran, live and pray, More than half grateful for the glittering prize, Human existence! If I note my |