And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.-" But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and toucht my trembling ears:
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Nor in the glistring foil

Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumor lies;
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfet witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed."

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:

"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake

75

80

110

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!

115

Of other care they little reckoning make,

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,

And shove away the worthy bidden guest:

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold

A sheephook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs!

120

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;

And when they list, their lean and flashy songs

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw:

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

125

But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said;-
But that two-handed engine at the door

130

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."
Return, Alpheus! the dread voice is past

That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse!
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells, and flowrets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low! where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

135

140

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine';
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,

To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.

*

*

*

*

*

Weep no more, woful shepherds! weep no more;
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,

145

150

165

Sunk though he be beneath the watry floor:

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore

170

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;—

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves;

Where, other groves and other streams along,

175

With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves;
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas! the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense; and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.

180

185

Thus sang the uncouth swain to th' oaks and rills,
While the still Morn went out with sandals gray;
He toucht the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretcht out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:
At last he rose, and twitcht his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

190

NOTES.-8. Lycidas, Milton's friend and fellow-student, Edward King, (Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge), who was drowned August 10, 1637, on his passage from Chester to Ireland. Some of his Latin verse has survived. 70. Clear. Here in the sense of Latin clarus, noble. 75. The blind Fury. At'ropos, one of the Fates (not Furies), cut the thread of life. 79. Glistring foil, glistening leaf of gold; connect with lies in 80. 82. Perfet, perfect; Chaucer has both "parfit" and "perfit." 109. Pilot, St. Peter. The outburst that follows is directed against Archbishop Laud, who in 1637 (the year in which Lycidas was written) had directed prosecutions against the Puritans, and (July 1637) obtained from the Star-Chamber a decree for the licensing

128.

by him of all books of divinity, poetry, philosophy, etc., before the printing of the same. 111. Amain, with swift force. 124. Scrannel, meagre. Privy paw, concealed paw. 130. Probably the headsman's axe (wielded with both hands) may have been implied, as well as the more obvious allusion to the "ax laid unto the root of the trees" (Matt. iii. 10). Laud's execution (January 10, 1645) gave this passage a dread significance. 132. The Alpheus, a river of the Morea, which for part of its course flows beneath the ground, was fabled to reappear in Fount Arethusa, Sicily. 133. Sicilian Muse, the Muse that inspired the idylls of Theocritus, the Sicilian poet. 138. Swart star, Sirius, the dog-star, supposed to be concerned in tropical heat, which makes men swart or swarthy. Sparely looks, glances slightly. 142. Rathe, "early;" comparative, rather—that is, " sooner. 143. Crow-toe, explained by Keightley as a single plant of the crowfoot. 149. His, as constantly in Old English, for "its." 176. Unexpressive, inexpressible; so Shakspeare, in As You Like It, iii. 2. 189. Doric-i.e., Syracusan, i.e., idyllic; for Theocritus, the idyllic poet, was a native of Syracuse, a Dorian colony.

GRASSES.

JOHN RUSKIN (b. 1819).

[Mr. Matthew Arnold, quoting the concluding lines of this charming study, remarks: "There is what the genius, the feeling, the temperament in Mr. Ruskin the original and incommunicable part has to do with it; and how exquisite it is! All the critic could possibly suggest in the way of objection would be, perhaps, that Mr. Ruskin is there trying to make prose do more than it can perfectly do; that what he is there attempting he will never, except in poetry, be able to accomplish to his own entire satisfaction: but he accomplishes so much that the critic may well hesitate to suggest even this."-Essays in Criticism: The Literary Influence of Academies (1880).]

Minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, not only with dew in the morning or mirage at noon, but with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of grainbells, all a-chime.

Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute quietly its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems, there of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point-not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much-caredfor example of Nature's workmanship, made only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven-and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether, of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer

air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleas ant to the eyes, or good for food-stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine-there be any one so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green. And well does Consider what we

owe merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft and countless and peaceful spears. The fields! Follow forth but for a little time the thoughts of all that we ought to recog nize in these words. All spring and summer is in them the walks by silent scented paths -the rest in noonday heat-the joy of herds and flocks-the power of all shepherd life and meditation the life of sunlight upon the world falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows where else it would have struck upon the dark mould or scorching dust. Pastures beside the pacing brooks-soft banks and knolls of lowly hills-thymy slopes of down, overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea-crisp lawns, all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the

sound of loving voices-all these are summed in those simple words. And these are not all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift in our own land, though still as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakspeare's peculiar joy, would open on us more and more; yet we have it but in part. Go out in the spring-time among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs, all veiled with blossom-paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness-look up toward the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may perhaps at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains."

Modern Painters.

AUTUMN DAYS.

WILL CARLETON (b. 1845).
Yellow, mellow, ripened days,
Sheltered in a golden coating;
O'er the dreamy, listless haze,
White and dainty cloudlets floating;
Winking at the blushing trees,

And the sombre, furrowed fallow;
Smiling at the airy ease

Of the southward flying swallow:
Sweet and smiling are thy ways,
Beauteous, golden Autumn days!
Shivering, quivering, tearful days,
Fretfully and sadly weeping;
Dreading still, with anxious gaze,
Icy fetters round thee creeping;
O'er the cheerless, withered plain,
Wofully and hoarsely calling;
Pelting hail and drenching rain

On thy scanty vestments falling:
Sad and mournful are thy ways,
Grieving, wailing Autumn days!

Farm Ballads,