Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling, still advance his praise.

His praise, ye winds that from four quarters blow,
Breath soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With evrey plant, in sign of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices, all ye living souls: ye birds,
That singing up to heaven-gate ascend,

Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep,
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,

To hill or valley, fountain or fresh shade,
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
Hail, universal Lord, be bounteous still
To give us only good; and if the night
Have gathered aught of evil or concealed,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark!

ABDIEL.

Paradise Lost, Book V.

He said and, as the sound of waters deep,
Hoarse murmur echoed to his words applause
Through the infinite host: nor less for that
The flaming seraph, fearless though alone,
Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold:
"O alienate from God! O spirit accursed,
Forsaken of all good! I see thy fall
Determined, and thy hapless crew involved
In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread
Both of thy crime and punishment: henceforth
No more be troubled how to quit the yoke
Of God's Messiah; those indulgent laws
Will not be now vouchsafed; other decrees
Against thee are gone forth without recall :
That golden sceptre which thou didst reject,
Is now an iron rod to bruise and break

Thy disobedience.

Well thou didst advise;

Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly
These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath
Impendent, raging into sudden flame,
Distinguish not: for soon expect to feel
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire.
Then who created thee lamenting learn,
When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know.''
So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he ;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,

His loyalty he kept, his love his zeal;
Nor number, nor example, with him wrought

To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained
Superior, nor of violence feared aught;

And, with retorted scorn, his back he turned
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.
[Return of the Seraph Abdiel.]

All night the dreadless angel, unpursued,

Through heaven's wide champain held his way; till Morn
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand

Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,

Where Light and Darkness in perpetual round

Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through heaven Grateful vicissitude like day and night;

Light issues forth, and at the other door

Obsequious Darkness enters, till her hour

To veil the heaven, though darkness there might well
Seem twilight here and now went forth the Morn,
Such as in highest heaven, arrayed in gold

Empyreal; from before her vanished Night

Shot through with orient beams; when all the plain
Covered with thick embattled squadrons bright,
Chariots, and flaming arms, and fiery steeds,
Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view;
War he perceived, war in procinct; and found
Already known what he for news had thought
To have reported; gladly then he mixed

Among those friendly powers, who him received
With joy and acclamations loud, that one,

That of so many myriads fallen yet one
Returned not lost. On to the sacred hill
They led him high applauded, and present
Before the seat supreme; from whence a voice,
From midst a golden cloud, thus mild was heard :
"Servant of God, well done; well hast thou fought,
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms;
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far, worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy care,

To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse: the easier conquest now
Remains thee, aided by this host of friends
Back on thy foes more glorious to return,
Than scorned thou didst depart, and to subdue
By force, who reason for their law refuse."

LYCIDAS.

Paradise Lost, Books V., VI.

YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;
And, with forced fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year:
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due :
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rime.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring :
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse :

So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn;

And as he passes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening, bright,

Tow'rd heav'n's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Tempered to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damotas loved to hear our song.

But oh! the heavy change now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn :

The willows, and the hazel copses green,

Shall now no more be seen,

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,

When first the white-thorn blows;

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

For neither were ye playing on the steep,

Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,

Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:

Ay me! I fondly dream!

Had ye been there. . . for what could that have done?

What could the Muse herself, that Orpheus bore,

The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,

Whom universal nature did lament,

When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days:
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ;

As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed."

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds !. That strain I heard was of a higher mood:

But now my oat proceeds,

And listens to the herald of the sea,

That came in Neptune's plea :

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap had doomed this gentle swain ?

And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory;

They knew not of his story:

And sage Hippotades their answer brings,

That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine

Sleep Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,

Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,