V.

TO A BIRD SINGING.

SWEET Bird, that sing'st away the early hours
Of winters past or coming, void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet smelling flowers;
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick which by thy songs
(Attired in sweetness) sweetly is not driven.
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven!
Sweet artless songster! thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres - yes, and to angels' lays.

VI.

THE PRAISE OF A SOLITARY LIFE.

THRICE happy he who by some shady grove,

а

Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own; b

Though solitary, who is not alone,

But doth converse with that eternal love.

O how more sweet is bird's harmonious moan,

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Or the hoarse sobbings of the widowed dove,

Than those smooth whisperings near a prince's throne,

Which good make doubtful, do the evil approve!

Or how more sweet is Zephyr's wholesome breath,

And sighs embalmed which new-born flowers unfold,
Than that applause vain honor doth bequeath!

How sweet are streams to poison drunk in gold!
The world is full of horrors, troubles, slights;
Woods' harmless shades have only true delights.

JOHN MILTON.

I.

WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY.*

CAPTAIN, or Colonel, or Knight in arms,

Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If deed of honor did thee ever please,

Guard them, and him within protect from harms :
He can requite thee; for he knows the charms
That call fame on such gentle acts as these,
And he can spread thy name o'er land and seas,
Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.
Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower:

"

The great Emathian conqueror † bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground; and the repeated air

Of sad Electra's poet had the power

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.‡

* In 1642, during the civil wars; when the army of Charles the First had arrived at Brentford, against the poet's friends, the Republicans.

† Alexander; when ninety thousand Thebans were killed, and thirty thousand taken prisoners.

During the conquest of Athens by Lysander, when some verses of Euripides happened to be sung at a banquet given to a council of war.

II.

ON THE DETRACTION WHICH FOLLOWED UPON THE WRITING

OF CERTAIN TREATISES.

I DID but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs:
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs,
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,

Which after held the sun and moon in fee.*
But this is got by casting pearl to hogs,
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
License they mean, when they cry Liberty;

For who loves that, must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.

The story of the peasants in Ovid, who were thus transformed for insulting Latona and her babes, Apollo and Diana.

III.

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.*

AVENGE, O Lord! thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not. In thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyr's blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe."

*In 1665, by order of the Duke of Savoy. It is delightful to be able to say, in this year 1856, that the slaughter has been "avenged" in a better manner than the stern poet desired; namely, by the erection of a Protestant Chapel in the capital of Piedmont, and under the auspices of a king of the Duke of Savoy's house.

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