Quips and Cranks,1 and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's2 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;

3

And in thy right hand lead with thee
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-brier 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.

Some time walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern-gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,"
Rob'd in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;8
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale9

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Quip, said to be the same as whip, a smart saying. Cranks, Warton considers unexplained, and interprets it cross-purposes. The German word implies weakness or sickness. Probably it is connected with wrench. To crank seems to mean, therefore, to bend; a crank, something bent, twisted.-"See how this river comes me cranking in." Shakespeare, I. Henry IV. Act III. Sc. 1. 2 The goddess of youth.

3 "The allusion is general to inaccessible and uncultivated scenes of nature" (T. Warton), not to the circumstance, as Newton thinks, that mountainous countries are favourable to political liberty. Milton thought of the Oreades of Greek mythology.-Warton. The perfect participle is used in poetry for the adjective in ble; so the adjective in ive see note 1, p. 180.

5 The various pleasures of Milton's Mirth are depicted over the whole range of the day, commencing with the morning. A great beauty of the poem is the adaptation of the pictures to the represented times. 6 See note 7, p. 16.

7 Eastern gate" seems a pet expression with the poets. State; see note 1, p. 99. Dight; see note 3, p. 56.

It has been suggested that tale means the counting of the sheep. Tale and tell in this

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures;
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The Cynosure1 of neighbouring eyes.

*

Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks2 sound
To many a youth and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade.

Tower'd cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs3 hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then, to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned socks be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

sense were not unfamiliar in our poetry, in and about Milton's time."-T. Warton. The counting was made at the dawn of day.

1 The pole-star. "In Shakespeare we have your eyes are lode-stars.'-Mids. Night's Dream, Act I. Sc. 1. And this was no uncommon compliment in Chaucer, Skelton, Sydney, Spencer, &c."-T. Warton.

Fiddles. If, as I have supposed, it is Chaucer's ribible, the diminutive of ribibe, used also by Chaucer, I must agree with Sir John Hawkins, that it comes originally from rebeb, the name of a Moorish musical instrument. The Moors brought it into Spain, whence it passed into Italy, and obtained the appellation of ribeca."-T. Warton. Ribibe, ribible, may be analogous to syllabe, syllable. 3 Shows, such as those mentioned below. The god of marriage, a frequent personage in masques. The Roman marriage veil was yellow or flame-coloured.-See Adam's Rom. Antiq. (Boyd), p. 403. The torch (taper) of Hymen seems an importation from the East.

5 Sock (soccus) and buskin (cothurnus), the slipper and boot or shoe, worn respectively by comedians and tragedians, are put for comedy and tragedy. Jonson excelled in comedy. These allusions to chivalric and theatrical amusements are supposed to indicate that Milton had not yet proceeded far in his puritanism.

And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian1 airs,
Married to immortal verse;
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes, with many a winding bout2
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning;
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed

Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free

His half-regain'd Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

FROM IL PENSEROSO.*

Hence, vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly, without father bred!
How little you bestead,

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 sun-beams;
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.

*

Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, 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.

The flute was borrowed by the Greeks from the Lydians; as by the Romans from the Etruscans, the descendants of the Lydians. The Lydian music is frequently alluded to by the classical writers. 2 A fold or twist.-Todd.

a The Thracian musician.-See Ovid, Met. x. 1, and xi. 1, et seq. 4 The Melancholy Man. Pensioners, for train, attendants: as in the Mids. Night's Dream, Act II. Sc. 1, of the Fairy Queen-"The cowslips tall her pensioners be." "This was in consequence of Elizabeth's establishment of a band of military courtiers by that name."-T. Warton.

Stole "was a veil which covered the head and shoulders, worn only by such of the Roman matrons as were distinguished for their modesty."-"Cyprus is a thin transparent tex

ture."-T. Warton.

Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait ;
And looks commèrcing 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,1
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 accustom'd oak:

Sweet bird, that shunn'st 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 had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off Curfew sound,
Over some wide-water'd shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar.

*

*

Or let my lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
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

1 "Temperance was one of Milton's favourite virtues."

2 Trismegistus, the Egyptian philosopher or deity, the alleged originator of science and

art. From his name are derived the English words hermetical and hermeneutics.

The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook;
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet, or with element.1
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In scepter'd pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine;2

Or what (though rare)3 of later age
Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage.

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited Morn appear,

Not trick'd and frounc'd as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,

But kercheft in a comely cloud,

While rocking winds are piping loud,

Or ushered with a shower still
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And, when the Sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan3 loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,

Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee with honied thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,

With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy feather'd Sleep ;7

And let some strange mysterious dream

Wave at his wings in airy stream

Subjects of the Platonic philosophy. The later Platonists included the Zabian astrology in their systems. 2 Subjects of Greek Tragedies. Pall, the robe Palla. Milton's acquaintance with the ancient models rendered his taste nice in modern dramatic literature. Buskin'd, see note 5, p. 185.

Tricked, said to be from " triches," (Gr.) hairs; entangled, hence ornamented, dressed;"tricks his beams."-Lycidas, see p. 190. Frounced, wrinkled, twisted, curiously ornamented; alleged etymology, frons, from the wrinkles of the forehead. Civil is applied by Shakespeare to Night, Rom. and Jul. Act III. Sc. 2. Attic boy. There seems a confusion here between Tithonus and Triptolemus. 5 The wood-deity. 6 Shining, bright. -Compare Shak. Rom. and Jul. Act III. Sc. 2. 7 Compare Virg. Ecl. i. 56-Consort, company, i. e. of the bee and the waters. A difficulty is made of at. "The dream is to wave at the wings of sleep in a 'display of lively portraiture.'"-Brydges.