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Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting Soul may pierce

In notes, with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out,

With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,

The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that

The hidden foul of harmony;

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IL PENSEROS O.

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 fome idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,

As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the fun-beams, Or likeft overing dreams

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The

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus train.
But hail thou Goddefs, fage and holy,
Hail divineft Melancholy,

Whose faintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human fight,

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And therefore to our weaker view

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O'er-laid with black, flaid wisdom's hue;

Black, but fuch as in efteem

Prince Memnon's fifter might beseem,

Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove

To fet her beauties praise above

The Sea-Nymphs, and their pow'rs offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended,

Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore

To folitary Saturn bore;

His daughter fhe (in Saturn's reign,
Such mixture was not held a ftain.)
Oft in glimmering bow'rs 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
Sober, ftedfaft, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And fable stole of Cyprus lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn

pure,

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Come,

Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gate,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt foul fitting in thine eyes:
There held in holy paffion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till

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With a fad leaden downward cast

Thou fix them on the earth as fast:

And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,

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Spare Faft, that oft with Gods doth diet,

And hears the Muses in a ring

Ay round about Jove's altar fing:
And add to these retired Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;

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But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,
Him that yon foars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The Cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hift along,
'Lefs Philomel will deign a fong,

Smoothing the rugged brow of night,

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In her sweetest, faddeft plight,

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To bless the doors from nightly harm:
Or let my lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in fome high lonely tow'r,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato to unfold

What worlds, or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forfook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook:

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And of those Demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
hath a true consent

Whose power
With planet, or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous tragedy

In fcepter'd pall come fweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the bufkin'd ftage.
But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Mufæus from his bower,
Or bid the foul of Orpheus fing,
Such notes, as warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,

And made Hell grant what love did seek.
Or call up him that left half told

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The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarfife,

And who had Canace to wife,

That own'd the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horfe of brass,

On which the Tartar king did ride;
And if ought else great bards beside

In fage and folemn tunes have sung,
Of turneys and of trophies hung,
Of forefts, and inchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

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