Hence, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight
In Stygian cave forlorn'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Or whether (as some sager sing)The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora
Iaying,
As he met her once a-Maying,
There, on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee,
Nymph, and bring with
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free:
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
Oft listening how the hounds and
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landskip round it measures:
Russet lawns, and fallows grey,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by a cottage chimney
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis
Are at their savoury dinner
Of herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes, with secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks
To many a youth and many a
Dancing in the chequered shade,
And young and old come forth to
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the livelong daylight fail:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar's lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs
With store of ladies, whose bright
Rain influence, and judge the
Of wit or arms, while both
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare,
Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding
Of linked sweetness long drawn
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that
The hidden soul of harmony;
That Orpheus' self may heave his
From golden slumber on a
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and
Such strains as would have won the
Of Pluto to have quite set
His half-regained Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.'This and the following poem [Il Penseroso] are exquisitely beautiful in themselves, but appear much more beautiful, when they are considered, as they were written, in contrast to each other.
There is a great variety of pleasing images in each of them; and it is remarkable, that the poet represents several of the same objects as exciting both mirth and melancholy, and affecting us differently according to the different dispositions and affections of the soul. This is nature and experience. He derives the title of both poems from the Italian, which language was then principally in vogue. "L'Allegro" is the chearful merry man; and in this poem he describes the course of mirth in the country and in the city from morning till noon, and from noon till night: and possibly he might have this in his thoughts, when he said afterwards in his Areopagitica----"there be delights, there be recreations and jolly pastimes that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in delightful dream." Vol. 1, p. 154, 155.
Edit. 1738. (line 10:
In dark Cimmerian desert...):
The Cimmerians were a people who liv'd in caves under ground, and never saw the light of the sun.
See Homer Odyss.
XI. 14. and Tibullus IV.
I. 65.(line 14:
Whom lovely Venus at a birth...&c):
The more ancient opinion, as we find it in Hesiod's Theogony, was that the Graces were the daughters of Jupiter and Eurynome, and this Spenser adopts in his Faery Queen.
B.6.
Cant. 10.
St. 22."They are the daughters of sky-ruling Jove,
By him begot of fair Eurynome."But Milton with great judgement and a very allowable liberty follows the account of their being sprung from Bacchus and Venus, because the mythology of it suited the nature of his subject better. -Thyer.(line 41:
To hear the lark begin his flight,...&c):
At the same time that Milton delights our imagination with this charming scene of rural chearfulness, he gives us a fine picture of the regularity of his life, and the innocency of his own mind.
The principal circumstances are taken from the earliest dawn of the morning, and prove the truth of what he says of himself in his Apology for Smectymnuus, that he -- "was up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labor, or to devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors &c":
And few minds,
I believe, but such as are innocent and unstain'd with guilty pleasures have any great taste for these pure and genuin ones which the poet describes. -Thyer.(line 45:
Then to come in spite of sorrow...):
These two poems,
L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, are certainly the best of Milton's productions in rime, for the rimes in Lycidas are irregular: but yet we may observe that several things are said, which would not have been said but only for the sake of the rime, and we have an instance,
I conceive, in the line before us.
Mr.
Pope,
I have been inform'd, had remark'd several defects of the same kind in these two poems; and there may be some truth and justness in the observation, which Dryden has made in the dedication of his Juvenal, that "rime was not Milton's talent, he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it;" but then it must be said, that he had talents for greater things, and there is more harmony in his blank verse than in all the riming poetry in the world.(line 92:
The upland hamlets...):
Upland, in opposition to the hay-making scene in the lower lands. -Thyer.(line 94:
And the jocund rebecs sound...): "Rebec" is a three-stringed fiddle, derived from the French "rebec" or the Italian "ribecca."(line 101:
With stories told of many a feat, &c):
These stories of Faeries and Goblins formerly made part of the belief of the country people, and with great propriety therefore are made the subjects of their conversation over their nut-bowl ale at night.
Shakespear too in compliance with these vulgar notions has introduc'd the like faery tales in several of his plays, and particularly in his Midsummer Night's Dream: and no wonder that Milton, who has so often imitated Shakespear, has imitated him likewise in this particular.(line 106:
To earn his cream bowl duly set, &c):
Reginald Scot gives a brief account of this imaginary Spirit much in the same manner with this of our author. "Your grand-dames, maids, were wont to set a bowl of milk for him, for his pains in grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight ---- his white bread and milk was his standing fee." Discovery of Witchcraft.
Lond. [1588 and] 1651. 4. p.66. -Peck.~ Th.
Newton,
Milton's Works, 2nd edition, 1753.
