51. 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’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue;
  Black, but such as in esteem
  Prince Memnon’s sister might beseem,
  Or that starred 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-haired 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 bowers 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, steadfast, and demure,
  All in a robe of darkest grain,
  Flowing with majestic train,
  And sable stole of Cyprus lawn
  Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
  Come, but keep thy wonted state,
  With even 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
  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
  Aye round about Jove’s altar sing;
  And add to these retired Leisure,
  That in trim gardens takes his pleasure. 
  But, first and chiefest, with thee bring
  Him that yon soars on golden wing,
  Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
  The Cherub Contemplation;
  And the mute Silence hist along,
  ’Less Philomel will deign a song,
  In her sweetest, saddest plight,
  Smoothing the rugged brow of Night;
  While Cynthia checks her dragon-yoke,
  Gently o’er the accustomed oak. 
  Sweet bird, that shunnest the noise of folly,
  Most musical, most melancholy! 
  Thee, chantress, oft the woods among
  I woo to hear thy even-song;
  And missing thee I walk unseen,
  On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
  To behold the wandering moon,
  Riding near her highest noon,
  Like one that has been led astray
  Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,
  And oft, as if her head she bowed,
  Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 
    Oft, on a plat of rising ground,