Such as the meeting foul 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 ty

The hidden foul of harmony;

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XIV.

IL PENSEROSO.

HENCE vain deluding joys,

The brood of folly without father bred, How little you befted,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys? Dwell in fome idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes poffefs, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the fun-beams, Or likest hovering dreams

fionate Shepherd to his Love, and The Nymph's
Reply to the Shepherd;

If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

These two poems are printed at length in the
notes upon the third Act of the Merry Wives
of Windfor in Mr. Warburton's edition.

Il Penferofo is the thoughtful melancholy man; and Mr. Thyer concurred with me in obferving that this poem both in its model. and principal circumftances is taken from a fong in praise of melancholy in Fletcher's Comedy call'd the Nice Valor or paffionate Madman. The reader will not be difpleas'd to fee it here, as it is well worth tranfcribing.

Hence all you vain delights,
As fhort as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly;
There's nought in this life fweet,
If man were wife to see't,
But only Melancholy,

5

The

Oh sweetest Melancholy.
Welcome folded arms, and fix'd eyes,
A figh that piercing mortifies,

A look that's faften'd to the ground,
A tongue chain'd up without a found.

Fountain heads, and pathlefs groves,
Places which pale paffion loves;
Moon-light walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly hous'd, fave bats and owls;
A midnight bell, a parting groan,
These are the founds we feed upon;
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley,
Nothing's fo dainty fweet,as lovely Melancholy.

The fickle penfioners of Morpheus train.
But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divineft Melancholy,

Whose faintly visage is too bright
To hit the fenfe of human fight,

And therefore to our weaker view

O'er-laid with black, ftaid wisdom's hue;
Black, but fuch as in esteem.

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove
To fet her beauties praise above

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