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Lest the sorcerer us entice

With some other new device.

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Not a waste or needless sound
Till we come to holier ground.
I shall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide;
And not many furlongs thence
Is your Father's residence,
Where this night are met in state
Many a friend to gratulate
His wished presence, and beside
All the swains that there abide
With jigs and rural dance resort.
We shall catch them at their sport,
And our sudden coming there
Will double all their mirth and cheer.

Come, let us haste; the stars grow high,
But Night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.

The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow Town, and the President's Castle: then come in Country Dancers, after them the ATTENDANT SPIRIT with the two BROTHERS and THE LADY

Song

Spir. Back, shepherds, back! enough your play

Till next sun-shine holiday.

Here be, without duck or nod,

Other trippings to be trod

Of lighter toes, and such court guise

As Mercury did first devise

With the mincing Dryades

On the lawns and on the leas.

This second Song presents them to their Father and

Mother

Noble Lord and Lady bright,
I have brought ye new delight.
Here behold so goodly grown
Three fair branches of your own.

Heaven hath timely tried their youth,

Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise,

To triumph in victorious dance

O'er sensual folly and intemperance.

The dances ended, the SPIRIT epiloguizes

Spir. To the ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky.
There I suck the liquid air,

All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree.

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Along the crispèd shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring;
The Graces, and the rosy-bosomed Hours
Thither all their bounties bring;
There eternal Summer dwells,
And west-winds, with musky wing
About the cedarn alleys fling

Nard and cassia's balmy smells.
Iris there with humid bow

Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can shew,
And drenches with Elysian dew
(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound,
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen.
But far above, in spangled sheen,
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced
Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.

But now my task is smoothly done:

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LYCIDAS

In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in their height.

YET once more, Oye laurels, and once more, -
Ye myrtles brown, with ive never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude

unripe

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. +
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear, 4

Compels me to disturb your season due; puper
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,

equal

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
10 Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. verse
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear?
15 Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse: >
So may some gentle Muse p

20 With Tuck me wh

And as he passes turn,

my destined urn,

20

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