To the tann’d haycock in the mead.

Sometimes with secure delight

The upland hamlets will invite,

When the merry bells ring round,

And the jocund rebecks sound

To many a youth, and many a maid,

Dancing in the chequer’d shade;

And young and old come forth to play

On a sunshine holiday,

Till the live-long daylight fail;

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

With stories told of many a feat,

How Faery Mab the junkets eat,

She was pinch’d and pull’d she said,

And he by friar’s lanthorn led,

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,

To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

His shadowy flail hath thresh’d the corn

That ten day-labourers could not end;

Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,

And stretch’d out all the chimney’s length,

Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

And crop-full out of doors he flings,

Ere the first cock his matin rings.

Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

By whispering winds soon lull’d asleep.

Tower’d cities please us then,

And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold,

In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes

Rain influence, and judge the prize

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,

And pomp, and feast, and revelry,

With mask, and antique pageantry;

Such sights as youthful poets dream

On summer eves by haunted stream.

Then to the well-trod stage anon,

If Jonson’s learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,

Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever against eating cares,

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,

Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce

In notes with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out,

With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,

The melting voice through mazes running,

Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus’ self may heave his head

From golden slumber on a bed

Of heap’d Elysian flow’rs, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto, to have quite set free

His half-regain’d Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

Il Penseroso

Hence vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred,

How little you bested,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys;

Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,

As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,

Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train.

But hail thou goddess, sage and holy,

Hail divinest Melancholy,

Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight;

And therefore to our weaker view,

O’er-laid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue;

Black, but such as in esteem,

Prince Memnon’s sister might beseem,

Or that starr’d Ethiop queen that strove

To set her beauty’s praise above

The sea nymphs, and their powers offended.

Yet thou art higher far descended,

Thee bright-hair’d Vesta long of yore,

To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she (in Saturn’s reign,

Such mixture was not held a stain)

Oft in glimmering bow’rs and glades

He met her, and in secret shades

Of woody Ida’s inmost grove,

While yet there was no fear of Jove.

Come pensive nun, devout and pure,

Sober, stedfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,

Flowing with majestic train,

And sable stole of cypress lawn,

Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

Come, but keep thy wonted state,

With ev’n step, and musing gait,

And looks commercing with the skies,

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:

There held in holy passion still,

Forget thyself to marble, till