LYCIDAS:

A

MONODY.

LYCIDAS.

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 highth.

Y

ET 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 forc'd 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 rhyme,
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 destin'd urn;

And, as he passes, turn,

And bid fair peace

be to my

sable shroud.

For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, We drove afield, 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, Toward heaven's descent had slop'd his westering wheel.

Mean while the rural ditties were not mute,

Temper'd to the oaten flute :

Rough Satyr's danc'd, and Fauns with cloven heel From the glad sound would not be absent long: And old Damætas lov'd to hear our song.

But, Ŏ the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desart 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

Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd 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 wisard 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 goary 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,