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Et modò villarum proxima rura placent. Turba frequens, facieque simillima turba dearum,

Splendida per medias itque reditque vias; Auctaque luce dies gemino fulgore coruscat.

Fallor? an et radios hinc quoque Phobus habet?

Hæc ego non fugi spectacula grata severus, Impetus et quò me fert iuvenilis agor; Lumina luminibus malè providus obvia misi,

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Neve oculos potui continuisse meos. Unam fortè aliis supereminuisse notabam; Principium nostri lux erat illa mali. Sic Venus optaret mortalibus ipsa videri, Sic regina Deûm conspicienda fuit. Hanc memor obiecit nobis malus ille Cupido,

Solus et hos nobis texuit antè dolos. Nec procul ipsc vafer latuit, multæque sagittæ,

Et facis a tergo grande pependit onus. Nec mora; nunc ciliis hæsit, nune virginis ori,

Insilit hinc labiis, insidet inde genis; 70 Et quascunque agilis partes iaculator oberrat,

Hei mihi! mille locis pectus inerme ferit.

Protinùs insoliti subierunt corda furores; Uror amans intùs, flammaque totus

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spake, and, shaking his arrow with the golden tip, he flew away into the warm breast of his mother Cypris. But I smiled derisively at his fierce threats, and had not the slightest fear of the boy.

And now I took my pleasure, sometimes in the city parks, where our citizens promenade, sometimes at neighboring countryplaces. Crowds of girls, with faces like to the faces of goddesses, came and went radiantly through the walks; the day brightened with a double splendor. Surely, the sun himself stole his beams from their faces. I was not stern with myself; I did not flee from the gracious spectacle, but let myself be led wherever youthful impuise directed. Rashly I sent my gaze to meet theirs; I could not control my eyes. Then by chance I noted one supreme above the others, and the light of her eyes was the beginning of my ills. She looked as Venus might wish to seem to mortals; lovely to behold as the queen of the gods was she That rascal Cupid, harboring his grudge, had thrown her in my path; all alone, he had woven this plot against me. Not far off the sly god was hiding; his torch and many arrows hung as a great load from his back. Not a moment did he lose. Now he clung to her eyelids, now to her virgin face; thence he hopped upon her lips, and occupied her cheeks; and wherever the nimble archer went, ah, me! from a thousand points of vantage he struck my defenceless breast. Suddenly unwonted furies assailed my heart; I burned inly with love, I was all flame. Meanwhile she who was my only delight in misery disappeared, never to be given to my eyes again.

I started on, full of mute complaining, stupefied. Often I stood in doubt whether to go on or turn back. My being was divided, my body remained behind, but my thoughts went after her. I found relief in weeping for the joy so suddenly snatched from me. Such was the grief of Juno's offspring Vulcan, for the heaven he had lost, when he was shot down the sky to the hearths of Lemnos; thus Amphiaraus borne down to Orcus by his thunderstricken horses, gazed back from the abyss at the vanishing light of the sun.

Quid faciam infelix, et luctu victus? Amores

Nec licet inceptos ponere, neve sequi. O utinam spectare semel mihi detur amatos

Vultus, et coràm tristia verba loqui! Forsitan et duro non est adamante creata, Fortè nec ad nostras surdeat illa preces! Crede mihi, nullus sic infeliciter arsit; 91 Ponar in exemplo primus et unus ego. Parce, precor, teneri cum sis Déus ales amoris;

Pugnent officio nec tua facta tuo. Iam tuus O certè est mihi formidabilis arcus,

Nate deâ, iaculis nec minus igne potens: Et tua fumabunt nostris altaria donis,

Solus et in Superis tu mihi summus eris. Deme meos tandem, verùm nec deme, furores;

Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis

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What shall I do, wretch that I am, and overcome by grief? I cannot take up my love or lay it by. O, may it be granted me to see her loved countenance again and to speak sadly with her face to face! Perhaps she is not all made of adamant, mayhap she would not be deaf to my prayers. Surely no one ever suffered more in Love's flame. I may stand first, a prime exemplar of love-sorrows. Spare me, I pray, since love is tender, and thou art its winged god! Let not thy deeds refute thy office. Now, ah, now at last thy bow is fearful to me, thou goddess-born, whose arrows are potent as fire! Henceforth thine altars shall smoke with my gifts; among all the gods thou shalt be for me single and supreme. Take away, then, my tortures nay, take them not away! I know not why it is, loving is such sweet wretchedness. Only grant thou leniently, that if hereafter any maiden is my destiny, the two hearts fated to love may be pinned together by a single shaft.

These vain trophies of my idleness I set up in time past, in unbalanced mood and with lax endeavor. Vicious error hurried me astray, and my untaught years were an ill mistress to me; until the shady Academe [i.e. Plato's philosophy] offered me its Socratic streams, and loosened from my neck the yoke to which I had submitted. At once all these youthful flames became extinct, and since then my breast is rigid with accumulated ice; whence Cupid himself fears freezing for his arrows, and Venus dreads my Diomedean strength.

[EPIGRAMMATA] [EPIGRAMS]

The short pieces which follow were originally printed without the general title Epigrams, under which they appear in modern editions, but were included under the title Elegies, as being written in elegiac metre. The four epigrams on the Gunpowder Plot are heavy and tasteless; they are signal illustra

tions of Milton's congenital lack of humor. The epigrams on Leonora Baroni are interesting autobiographically. It has been plausibly conjectured that Milton heard this famous singer at the concert which he speaks of attending at the palace of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, during his first visit to Rome, Octo

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ber and November, 1638. Efforts have been made, ineffectually, to identify her with the "donna leggiadra" of Milton's Italian poems, the Bolognese lady whose novel beauty "sotto nova idea pellegrina bellezza" thralled him at some period of his Italian residence. The Baroni were originally a Neapolitan family, but they had settled in Rome about a year before Milton's visit. Of Leonora, Bayle's Dictionary, quoted by Masson, says that she was one of the finest voices in the world," and that "an infinity of beaux esprits made verses in her praise." It is interesting in

IN PRODITIONEM BOMBARDICAM

CUM simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britannos

Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, nefas,

Fallor? an et mitis voluisti ex parte videri,

Et pensare malâ cum pietate scelus? Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria cæli, Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis; Qualiter ille, feris caput inviolabile Parcis,

Liquit Iördanios turbine raptus agros.

IN EANDEM

SICCINE tentâsti cælo donâsse Iacobum, Quæ septemgemino Bellua monte lates? Ni meliora tuum poterit dare munera numen,

Parce, precor, donis insidiosa tuis.' Ille quidem sine te consortia serus adivit Astra, nec inferni pulveris usus ope. Sic potiùs fœdos in cælum pelle cucullos, Et quot habet brutos Roma profana Deos;

Namque hac aut aliâ nisi quemque adiuveris arte,

Crede mihi, cæli vix bene scandet iter. 10

IN EANDEM

PURGATOREM animæ derisit Iacobus ignem, Et sine quo superûm non adeunda do

mus.

Frenduit hoc trinâ monstrum Latiale coronâ,

Movit et horrificum cornua dena minax. Et "Nec inultus" ait "temnes mea sacra, Britanne;

Supplicium spretâ religione dabis;

this connection to note that Milton's susceptibility to music was accompanied by an almost complete insensibility to the appeal of the plastic and graphic arts, if we are to judge by the absence of any mention of the latter among his recorded impressions of Italy.

Three "epigrams" of minor interest, entitled respectively Apologus de Rustico et Hero, De Moro (title supplied by the editors), and Ad Christinam Suecorum Reginam, will be found, together with three Greek pieces from the SYLVE, and two epigrams on Salmasius, in the Appendix.

ON THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

WHEN, perfidious Faux, you attempted your late unspeakable crime against the King and the British lords, - do I mistake you, or did you really want to show a partial mildness and compensate your crime with a false piety? Doubtless you intended to send them to the high courts of Heaven in a chariot of sulphurous smoke and wheeling flame, even as Elijah, that head inviolable by the fierce Parcæ, was snatched away in a whirlwind from the fields of Jordan.

ON THE SAME

O BEAST acrouch on the seven hills, did you attempt thus to send King James to Heaven? Unless your divinity has power to bestow better largess, forbear, I pray, your insidious gifts. Without the aid of your infernal powder he has gone, timely late, to the companionable stars. Do you rather blow skyward your base cowls, and all the brute gods profane Rome worships; for unless you aid them thus or somehow else, they will hardly, believe me, clamber up the hard road to Heaven.

ON THE SAME

KING JAMES laughed at those purgatorial fires through which, forsooth, the soul must approach its supernal home. At this the triple-crowned Latin monster gnashed its teeth, and moved its ten horns in horrid threat, saying: "Man of Britain, thou shalt not mock my mysteries unpunished; thou shalt pay for despising my religion; and if

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ever thou enterest the starry dome of Heaven, only through flame shall the sorry way lie open." O how near the awful truth did you speak! A little more, and the words had not lacked their weight. For almost he went, rolled high by Tartarean fire, a burnt shade, to the upper shores.

ON THE SAME

HIM whom impious Rome had vowed to her own Furies, whom she had damned to Styx and the Tænarian gulf, him, contrarywise, she now longs to send to the stars, and seeks to exalt him to the gods on high.

ON THE INVENTor of GunpowDER BLIND antiquity praised Prometheus, who brought the heavenly torch from the sun; but for me he shall be greater who stole from Jove his lurid arms and threeforked thunderbolt.

TO LEONORA, SINGING
(At Rome)

To every man his angel is allotted (believe it, ye people!), his winged angel from the ethereal hierarchies. What wonder, Leonora, if a greater glory be yours? For your very voice sounds the present God. Either God himself, or surely at least the third Mind emptying Heaven of itself, thrills mysteriously through your throat; thrills, suavely accustoming mortal hearts by tender degrees to immortal sounds. Yea, if all things be God, and He be transfused through all, yet in you alone He speaks, the rest He possesses in silence.

TO THE SAME

ANOTHER Leonora captivated Torquato, the poet, who went mad for love of her. Ah, poor fellow, how much happier had he been to lose his wits in this your day, and on your dear account, hearing you sing with Pierian voice, and wake the golden strings of your mother's lyre! Though he rolled his eyes more fiercely than Pentheus, and raved to swooning, you could have soothed his blind and reeling senses with

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SYLVARUM LIBER-POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES
IN OBITUM PROCANCELLARII MEDICI

Anno ætatis 17

ON THE DEATH OF THE VICE-CHANCELLOR, A PHYSICIAN
(Misdated Anno ætatis 16, in editions of 1645 and 1673)

The personage here celebrated in Horatian verse was John Gostlin, M.D., twice Vicechancellor of the University of Cambridge, whose death occurred in October, 1626, at the beginning of Milton's third academic year. The verses are devoid of the personal accent,

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except at the close, where we may perhaps detect a strain of warmer feeling breaking through the tone of exaggerated eulogy conventionally accepted as the proper one for such academic verse-tributes.

CHILDREN of Iapetus, who inhabit the pendulous orb of earth, learn to obey the laws of fate, and raise hands of humble supplication to the Parcæ. If once wandering Death coming from Tartarus calls you, alas, with woeful voice, in vain shall you resort to stratagem and delay. Every one must go through the shades of Styx. If strength of arm availed to ward off destined death, fierce Hercules would not have fallen on Macedonian Oeta, poisoned by the blood of Nessus; nor would Ilion have seen Hector slain through the base guile of envious Pallas; nor Sarpedon, whom the phantom of Achilles slew with the Locrian sword, while Jove shed tears. If words of witchcraft could forestall Fate, wicked Circe, parent of Telegonus, would have lived on, and the sister of Absyrtus, Medea, would still wield her potent wand.

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