Sprung of old Anchises' line,
May thy brimmèd waves for this
Their full tribute never miss 925
From a thousand petty rills,
That tumble down the snowy hills;
Summer drouth, or singèd air
Never scorch thy tresses fair,
Nor wet October's torrent flood 930
Thy molten crystal fill with mud;
May thy billows roll ashore
The beryl, and the golden ore;
May thy lofty head be crowned
With many a tower and terrace round, 935
And here and there thy banks upon
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.
Come, Lady; while Heaven lends us grace,
Let us fly this cursed place,
Lest the sorcerer us entice 940
With some other new device.
Not a waste or needless sound,
Till we come to holier ground.
I shall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide; 945
And not many furlongs thence
Is your Father's residence,
Where this night are met in state
Many a friend to gratulate
His wished presence, and beside 950
All the swains that there abide
With jigs, and rural dance resort.
We shall catch them at their sport,
And our sudden coming there
Will double all their mirth and cheer. 955
Come, let us haste; the stars grow high,
But Night sits monarch yet in the mid-sky.
_The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow town and the
President's castle; then come in country dancers; after
them the ATTENDANT SPIRIT, with the TWO BROTHERS and the
LADY._
_Song._
_Spir._ Back, shepherds, back! enough your play,
Till next sunshine holiday.
Here be, without duck or nod, 960
Other trippings to be trod
Of lighter toes, and such court-guise
As Mercury did first devise
With the mincing Dryades
On the lawns and on the leas. 965
_This second Song presents them to their Father and
Mother._
Noble Lord, and Lady bright,
I have brought ye new delight.
Here behold so goodly grown
Three fair branches of your own.
Heaven hath timely tried their youth, 970
Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise,
To triumph in victorious dance
O'er sensual folly and intemperance. 975
_The dances ended, the SPIRIT epiloguizes._
_Spir._ To the ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky.
There I suck the liquid air, 980
All amidst the gardens fair
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree.
Along the crispèd shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring; 985
The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours
Thither all their bounties bring.
There eternal Summer dwells,
And west-winds with musky wing
About the cedarn alleys fling 990
Nard and cassia's balmy smells.
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can shew, 995
And drenches with Elysian dew
(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound, 1000
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen.
But far above, in spangled sheen,
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced
Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced 1005
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born, 1010
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.
But now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly, or I can run
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, 1015
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb 1020
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.
LYCIDAS
The poem of Lycidas was occasioned by the death of Milton's College
friend, Edward King, son of Sir John King, Knight, Privy Councillor for
Ireland, and Secretary to the Irish Government. King was admitted on the
9th of June, 1626, at the age of fourteen, to Christ's College,
Cambridge, about sixteen months after Milton's admission. Milton left
College after receiving his Master's degree in July, 1632; so that at
this date, he and King had been at College together about six years.
King was made a Fellow of his College in June, 1630, in conformity with
a royal mandate, secured, it may have been, through Sir John's influence
at court, due to his official position. He had also been Privy
Councillor for the Kingdom of Ireland, to their majesties, Elizabeth and
James.
Milton's claim, as a scholar, to the Fellowship must have been far
superior to King's, and he was ahead of him in his College course. But
Fellowships went a good deal by political and ecclesiastical influence;
and, furthermore, it is not likely that Milton would have accepted a
Fellowship at the time, if it had been offered to him, involving, as it
did, the taking of orders, against which Milton's mind must already at
that time have been decided, though he had been sent to the University
with the Church in view.
King received his Master's degree in July, 1633, and continued his
connection with the College as fellow, tutor, and, in 1634-35, as
'prælector.' He was noted for his amiability and purity of character and
genuine piety; and Milton was probably drawn to him more by these
qualities than by his intellectual and poetical abilities. He left
numerous Latin compositions (published in various collections), which,
according to Masson, have no remarkable poetical merit. But their
subjects, all, with one exception, royal occasions, did not afford
opportunities for the display of poetic genius,—the birth of the
Princess Mary, the king's recovery from the smallpox, the king's safe
return from Scotland, July, 1633, commendatory iambics prefixed to a
Latin comedy, _Senile Odium_, performed in Queen's College, the birth of
Prince James, Duke of York, the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, and the
birth of the Princess Anne.
King was preparing himself for the Church; and it may be inferred from
Milton's poem that he regarded him as worthy, in an eminent degree, to
discharge the responsible duties of a Christian minister.
In the Long Vacation of 1637, King set out to visit his family and
friends in Ireland. He embarked at Chester for Dublin. When but a short
distance from the Welsh coast, the weather being at the time, as appears
from Milton's poem, perfectly calm, the ship (it is alluded to as a
'fatal and perfidious bark') struck on a rock and soon went down, only a
few of the passengers being rescued.
A volume of 'In Memoriam' poems, by members of different Colleges of the
University, and others, twenty in Latin, three in Greek, and thirteen in
English, was printed at the University Press and published early in the
following year (1638). The Latin and Greek part of the volume bore the
title, 'Justa Edovardo King naufrago, ab amicis mœrentibus, amoris et
μνείας χάριν. _Si recte calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est._
Petron. Arb. Cantabrigiæ, apud Thomam Buck et Rogerum Daniel, celeberrimæ
Academiæ typographos. 1638.'
The English part bore the title, 'Obsequies to the memorie of Mr. Edward
King, Anno Dom. 1638. Printed by Th. Buck and R. Daniel, printers to
the Vniversitie of Cambridge, 1638.'
Prefixed to the volume is a brief Latin inscriptive panegyric, in which
King's last moments are described: 'haud procul a littore Britannico,
navi in scopulum allisa et rimis ex ictu fatiscente, dum alii vectores
vitæ mortalis frustra satagerent, immortalem anhelans in genu provolutus
oransque una cum navigio ab aquis absorptus, animam deo reddidit iiii
eid. Sextilis anno Salutis MDCXXXVII, Ætatis xxv.'
The extracts given by Masson, from the English poems, have no poetic
merit, nor merit of any kind, being clumsy tissues of far-fetched,
cold-blooded conceits, of which the following, from three of the
contributions, are not unfair specimens. There could not have been an
excess of poetical ability in the University at the time.
'I am no poet here; my pen's the spout
Where the rain-water of my eyes runs out.
In pity of that name whose fate we see
Thus copied out in grief's Hydrographie.'
'Since first the waters gave
A blessing to him which the soul did save,
They loved the holy body still too much,
And would regain some virtue from a touch.'
'Weep forth your tears, then; pour out all your tide;
All waters are pernicious since King died.'
The writers must all have sat at the feet and learned of John Donne,
whose coldly ingenious conceits had for some time been passing for
poetry.
Milton might well lament, in the person of his bereaved shepherd, the
sad decline of poetry, since the Elizabethan days.
'Alas! what boots it with uncessant 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?
Milton's poem comes last in the collection, without title, and with
simply the initials I. M. appended. It presents a strange contrast to
the worthless productions which precede it. Unless the other writers'
poetic appreciation was very far in advance of their poetic power, as
exhibited in their several contributions, they could have had but little
appreciation of the merits of Milton's poem. There is no reason for
supposing that King's death caused Milton a deep personal grief, such as
that which was caused by the death of Charles Diodati, and to which the
_Epitaphium Damonis_ bears testimony.
Milton had no doubt cherished for King a deep regard, as one
exceptionally fitted, by his purity of character, and sincere piety, for
the sacred office. And the presentation, in his elegiac ode, of these
qualities, afforded an occasion for giving an expression to what was
evidently a greater grief to him than the death of his College friend,
namely, the condition of the Church, which he regarded as corrupt in
itself, and as in league with the despotic tendencies of the political
power. All the 'higher strains' of the ode are inspired by a holy
indignation toward the time-serving ecclesiastics, whose unworthiness,
as shepherds of Christ's flock, he sets forth in the burning
denunciations attributed to St. Peter, as the type of true episcopal
power,—denunciations which are prophetic of those he is destined to
pronounce in a few years, in his polemic prose works, against the more
developed ecclesiastical and political abuses of the time, as one
specially commissioned by God, so to do, in the words delivered to the
prophet: 'Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and
declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob
their sins.'
When the poem was republished with the author's full name, in 1645, it
had the following heading: 'In this Monody the author bewails a learned
friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish
seas, 1637; and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted
Clergy, then in their height.'
This heading would, no doubt, have caused the rejection of the poem by
the Cambridge authorities. Milton's hostility to the hierarchy of
England was little suspected then: he was no doubt regarded as a loyal
and dutiful son of his _Alma Mater_, and, besides, it is not likely that
the several contributions to the King Memorial were looked into very
closely by the Committee of Examination.
The death of the Shepherd Lycidas is made to image forth the death of a
pure priesthood. It is possible that Milton may have seen an
etymological significance in the name Lycidas (which the philology of
the present day would not admit) and which caused him to adopt the name
as bearing upon the ecclesiastical import of the poem. The name for him
may have signified a _wolf-seer_, to look out for the wolf being one of
the most important duties of the shepherd who has the care of the sheep
and of the spiritual shepherd or pastor who watches over Christ's flock.
'The pilot of the Galilean lake,' St. Peter, 'the type and head of true
episcopal power,' is introduced among the mourners of the death of King,
denouncing the lewd hirelings of the priesthood of the time.
'How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.'
The two last verses some commentators have explained as a prophecy of
the execution of Archbishop Laud, which took place on the 10th of
January, 1644, six years after the publication of 'Lycidas.' Warton thus
paraphrases the lines: 'But there will soon be an end of all these
evils; the axe is at hand, to take off the head of him who has been the
great abettor of these corruptions of the gospel. This will be done by
one stroke.'
If this is the meaning of the passage, it was certainly a very
remarkable prophecy, when it was written, for the king and the
archbishop were then at the height of their power, and there was little
or nothing to indicate its overthrow.
The passage admits of a more probable explanation. The two-handed
engine, the epithet 'two-handed' meaning that its length and weight
required it to be grasped with both hands, refers to the sword of St.
Michael, the guardian and protector of the Church. In the 6th Book of
the 'Paradise Lost' (vv. 250-253) it is said of the sword of Michael
that it
'Smote and felled
Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down
Wide-wasting.'
The poet in this passage therefore means to say that St. Michael's sword
is to smite off the head of Satan, who, at the door of Christ's fold,
is, 'with privy paw,' daily devouring the hungry sheep.
In a sublime invocation to the Son of God, at the conclusion of the
fourth section of 'Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against
Smectymnuus,' Milton says: 'As thou didst dignify our fathers' days with
many revelations above all the foregoing ages, since thou tookest the
flesh, so thou canst vouchsafe to us (though unworthy) as large a
portion of thy spirit as thou pleasest; for who shall prejudice thy
all-governing will? Seeing the power of thy grace is not passed away
with the primitive times, as fond and faithless men imagine, but thy
kingdom is now at hand, and thou _standing at the door_. Come forth out
of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth! put on
the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited
sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the
voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.'
The view taken is strengthened by another disputed passage of the poem,
a few verses farther on. The poet is addressing his drowned friend,
whose body he imagines to be tossed about by the waves (vv. 154-163):
'Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold,
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'
By 'the fable of Bellerus old,' is meant St. Michael's Mount at the
Land's End in Cornwall, anciently named Bellerium, from Bellerus, a
Cornish giant, where the Vision of St. Michael was, by the old fable,
represented to sit, looking toward far Namancos and the hold of Spanish
Bayona.
Much of the deeper meaning of the poem centres in the three last verses
of the passage quoted:
'Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold,
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'
The annotators say nothing, so far as I know, about the application of
the great Vision of the guarded mount to the ecclesiastical meaning of
the poem. The meaning I take to be this: in making the Archangel
Michael, the guardian and defender of the Church of Christ, look toward
Namancos and Bayona's hold, _i.e._ toward Spain, the great stronghold,
at the time, of Papacy, and which, in the reign of Elizabeth, had
threatened England with invasion and with the imposition of the Roman
Catholic religion, the poet would evidently imply the Archangel's
watchfulness over the Church against foreign foes. But the danger is not
from _without_ (this I take to be the idea shadowed forth), the danger
is not from without—it lies _within_ the Church. Milton, or rather
'Milton transformed in his imagination, for the time, into a poetic
shepherd,' therefore says:
'Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'
Lycidas, who is made to represent, allegorically, the good shepherd that
careth for the sheep and looketh out for the wolf, is _dead_; and the
lewd hirelings who, for their bellies' sake, have crept into the fold,
and to whom the hungry sheep look up and are not fed, have themselves
become grim wolves, and with privy paw seize upon and devour the flock.
'Lycidas' was the last of Milton's poems produced during his residence
under his father's roof at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. He set out soon
after on his continental tour. Perhaps the 'fresh woods and pastures
new,' in the last verse of the poem, refers to this contemplated tour.
On his return to his native land, he had to bid farewell, a long
farewell, to the loved haunts of the Muses, and gird himself to fight
the battle of civil and religious liberty.