Up with the day, the Sun thou welcom'st then, Sport'st in the gilt plaits of his beams, And all these merry days mak'st merry men Thyself and melancholy streams. But ah! the sickle! golden ears are cropt; Ceres and Bacchus bid good-night; Sharp frosty fingers all your flowers have topt, And what scythes spared winds shave off quite. Poor verdant fool! and now green ice, thy joys Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass Bid us lay in 'gainst winter rain, and poise Their floods with an o'erflowing glass. Thou best of men and friends, we will create A genuine summer in each other's breast; And spite of this cold time and frozen fate, Thaw us a warm seat to our rest. Our sacred hearths shall burn eternally As vestal flames; the North-wind, he Shall strike his frost-stretched wings, dissolve, and fly This Etna in epitome. Dropping December shall come weeping in, Bewail th' usurping of his reign; But when in showers of old Greek* we begin, Shall cry, he hath his crown again! Night as clear Hesper shall our tapers whip From the light casements where we play, And the dark hag from her black mantle strip, And stick there everlasting day. *Greek wine. Thus richer than untempted kings are we, That asking nothing, nothing need; Though lord of all what seas embrace, yet he That wants himself is poor indeed. RICHARD LOVELACE. TO JOANNA. As it befell, One summer morning we had walked abroad At break of day, Joanna and myself. 'Twas that delightful season when the broom, Full-flowered, and visible on every steep, Along the copses runs in veins of gold. Our pathway led us on to Rotha's banks; And when we came in front of that tall rock That eastward looks, I there stopped short, and stood Tracing the lofty barrier with my eye From base to summit; such delight I found To note in shrub and tree, in stone and flower, That intermixture of delicious hues, In one impression, by connecting force Of their own beauty, imaged in the heart. When I had gazed perhaps two minutes' space, Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud. The Rock, like something starting from a sleep, Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed again; That ancient Woman seated on Helm-crag Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar, And the tall Steep of Silver-how, sent forth A noise of laughter; southern Loughrigg heard, And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone; Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky Carried the Lady's voice, -old Skid daw blew His speaking-trumpet; back out of the clouds Of Glaramara southward came the voice; And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head. "Now whether" (said I to our cordial friend, 66 Who in the hey-day of astonishment Smiled in my face), this were in simple truth A work accomplished by the brotherhood Of ancient mountains, or my ear was touched With dreams and visionary impulses To me alone imparted, sure I am That there was a loud uproar in the hills." And while we both were listening, to my side The fair Joanna drew, as if she wished To shelter from some object of her fear. And hence long afterwards, when eighteen moons Were wasted, as I chanced to walk alone Beneath this rock, at sunrise, on a calm And silent morning, I sat down, and there, In memory of affections old and true, I chiselled out in those rude charac ters Joanna's name deep in the living stone; And I and all who dwell by my fireside Have called the lovely rock, "Joanna's Rock." WORDSWORTH. IL PENSEROSO. HENCE, vain deluding joys, The brood of Folly without father bred, How little you bestead, 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, Black, but such as in esteem seem, Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above The Sea-Nymphis, 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, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: With a sad leaden downward cast Thou fix them on the earth as fast: And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with Gods doth diet, And hears the Muses in a ring ure; But first, and chiefest, with thee bring, |