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'Twas taught by wise Pythagoras
One soul might through more bodies pass:
Seeing such transmigration there,
She thought it not a fable here.
Such a resemblance of all parts,
Life, death, age, fortune, nature, arts,
Then lights her torch at theirs, to tell
And show the world this parallel :
Fix'd and contemplative their looks,
Still turning over Nature's books;
Their works chaste, moral, and divine,
Where profit and delight combine;
They, gilding dirt, in noble verse
Rustic philosophy rehearse.

When heroes, gods, or godlike kings,
They praise, on their exalted wings
To the celestial orbs they climb,

And with the' harmonious spheres keep time.
Nor did the'r actions fall behind

Their words, but with like candour shin'd;

Each drew fair characters, yet none

Of these they feign'd excels their own.
Both by two generous princes lov'd,
Who knew, and judg'd what they approv'd:
Yet having each the same desire,
Both from the busy throng retire.
Their bodies, to their minds resign'd,
Car'd not to propagate their kind:
Yet though both fell before their hour,
Time on their offspring hath no power:
Nor fire nor fate their bays shall blast,
Nor death's dark veil their day o'ercast.

EPISTLE

To Sir Richard Fanshawe, upon his Translation of Pastor Fido.

SUCH is our pride, our folly, or our fate,

That few but such as cannot write, translate:
But what in them is want of art or voice,
In thee is either modesty or choice.

While this great piece, restor'd by thee, doth stand
Free from the blemish of an artless hand,
Secure of fame thou justly dost esteem
Less honour to create than to redeem.
Nor ought a genius less than his that writ
Attempt translation; for transplanted wit
All the defects of air and soil doth share,
And colder brains like colder climates are:
In vain they toil, since nothing can beget
A vital spirit but a vital heat.

That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line:
Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
Not the effect of poetry but pains;

Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at words.
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make translations and translators too :
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame:
Fording his current, where thou find'st it low
Lett'st in thine own, to make it rise and flow,
Wisely restoring whatsoever grace

It lost by change of times, or tongues, or place.
Nor fetter'd to his numbers and his times,
Betray'st his music to unhappy rhymes.
Nor are the nerves of his compacted strength
Stretch'd and dissolv'd into unsinew'd length:
Yet, after all, (lest we should think it thine)
Thy spirit to his circle dost confine.

New names, new dressings, and the modern cast,
Some scenes, some persons alter'd, and out-fac'd
The world, it were thy work; for we have known.
Some thank'd and prais'd for what was less their own.
That master's hand which to the life can trace
The airs, the lines, and features of the face,
May with a free and bolder stroke express
A varied posture or a flattering dress:

He could have made those like who made the rest,
But that he knew his own design was best.

SONG.

MORPHEUS, the humble god, that dwells

In cottages and smoky cells,
Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down;
And, though he fears no prince's frown,
Flees from the circle of a crown.

Come, I say, thou pow'rful god,
And thy leaden charming rod,
Dipp'd in the Lethean lake,
O'er his wakeful temples shake,
Lest he should sleep, and never wake.

Nature, alas ! why art thou so
Obliged to thy greatest foe?
Sleep, that is thy best repast,

Yet of death it bears a taste,
And both are the same thing at last.

JOHN MILTON.

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 shape possess, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, Or likest hov'ring 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 starr'd Ethiop queen, that strove
For other beauties praise above

The sea-nymphs, and these powers offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended;

Thee bright-hair'à 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 glade
He met her, and in sweet shade
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober and stedfast, 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 hear the muses in a ring

Ay 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 th' accustom'd oak ;

Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, chantress of the woods among,
I woo to hear thy evening song;
And, missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wand'ring moon,
Riding near her highest noon;
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heav'ns' wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping thro' a fleecy cloud,
Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfeu sound;

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