Classic Poem

As when a mariner, accounted lost,
Upon the wat'ry Desert long time tost,
In Summer's parching heat, in Winter's cold,
In tempests great, in dangers manifold,
Is by a fav'ring wind drawn up the mast,
Whence he descries his native soil at last,
For whose glad sight he gets the hatches under,
And to the ocean tells his joy in thunder,
(Shaking those barnacles into the sea,
At once that in the womb and cradle lay)
When suddenly the still inconstant wind
Masters before, that did attend behind,
And grows so violent that he is fain
Command the pilot stand to sea again,
Lest want of sea-room in a channel straight,
Or casting anchor might cast o'er his freight:
Thus, gentle Muse, it happens in my song:
A journey, tedious for a strength so young,
I undertook by silver-seeming floods,
Past gloomy bottoms and high-waving woods,
Climb'd mountains where the wanton kidling dallies,
Then with soft steps enseal'd the meeken'd valleys,
In quest of memory: and had possest
A pleasant garden for a welcome rest
No sooner, than a hundred themes come on,
And hale my bark anew for Helicon.
Thrice-sacred Powers! (if sacred Powers there be
Whose mild aspect engyrland Poesy)
Ye happy sisters of the learned Spring,
Whose heavenly notes the woods are ravishing!
Brave Thespian maidens, at whose charming lays
Each moss-thrumb'd mountain bends, each current plays!
Piërian singers! O ye blessed Muses!
Who as a gem too dear the world refuses!
Whose truest lovers never clip with age,
O be propitious in my pilgrimage!
Dwell on my lines! and till the last sand fall,
Run hand in hand with my weak Pastoral!
Cause every coupling cadence flow in blisses,
And fill the world with envy of such kisses.
Make all the rarest beauties of our clime,
That deign a sweet look on my younger rhyme,
To linger on each line's enticing graces,
As on their lovers' lips and chaste embraces!
Through rolling trenches of self-drowning waves,
Where stormy gusts throw up untimely graves,
By billows whose white foam show'd angry minds
For not out-roaring all the high-rais'd winds,
Into the ever-drinking thirsty sea
By rocks that under water hidden lay
To shipwreck passengers, (so in some den
Thieves bent to robb'ry watch wayfaring men,)
Fairest Marina, whom I whilom sung,
In all this tempest, violent though long,
Without all sense of danger lay asleep:
Till tossed where the still inconstant deep,
With widespread arms, stood ready for the tender
Of daily tribute that the swoll'n floods render
Into her chequer; whence, as worthy kings,
She helps the wants of thousand lesser springs:
Here wax'd the winds dumb, shut up in their caves;
As still as midnight were the sullen waves;
And Neptune's silver ever-shaking breast
As smooth as when the halcyon builds her nest.
None other wrinkles on his face were seen
Than on a fertile mead, or sportive green,
Where never ploughshare ripp'd his mother's womb
To give an aged seed a living tomb;
Nor blinded mole the batt'ning earth e'er stirr'd;
Nor boys made pitfalls for the hungry bird.
The whistling reeds upon the waters' side
Shot up their sharp heads in a stately pride;
And not a binding osier bow'd his head,
But on his root him bravely carried.
No dandling leaf play'd with the subtile air,
So smooth the sea was, and the sky so fair.
Now with his hands, instead of broad-palm'd oars,
The swain attempts to get the shell-strew'd shores,
And with continual lading making way.
Thrust the small boat into as fair a bay
As ever merchant wish'd might be the road
Wherein to ease his sea-torn vessel's load.
It was an island, hugg'd in Neptune's arms,
As tend'ring it against all foreign harms,
And Mona hight: so amiably fair,
So rich in soil, so healthful in her air,
So quick in her increase, (each dewy night
Yielding that ground as green, as fresh of plight
As 'twas the day before, whereon then fed
Of gallant steers full many a thousand head)
So deck'd with floods, so pleasant in her groves,
So full of well-fleec'd flocks and fatten'd droves;
That the brave issue of the Trojan line,
Whose worths, like diamonds, yet in darkness shine;
Whose deeds were sung by learned bards as high,
In raptures of immortal poesy,
As any nations, since the Grecian lads
Were famous made by Homer's Iliads:
Those brave heroic spirits, 'twixt one another,
Proverbially call Mona Cambria's mother.
Yet Cambria is a land from whence have come
Worthies well worth the race of Ilium;
Whose true desert of praise could my Muse touch,
I should be proud that I had done so much.
And though of mighty Brute I cannot boast,
Yet doth our warlike strong Devonian coast
Resound his worth, since on her wave-worn strand
He and his Trojans first set foot on land,
Struck sail, and anchor cast on Totnes' shore,
Though now no ship can ride there any more.
In th' island's road the swain now moors his boat
Unto a willow, lest it outwards float,
And with a rude embracement taking up
The maid, more fair than she that fill'd the cup
Of the great thunderer, wounding with her eyes
More hearts than all the troops of deities,
He wades to shore, and sets her on the sand,
That gently yielded when her foot should land;
Where bubbling waters through the pebbles fleet,
As if they strove to kiss her slender feet.
Whilst like a wretch, whose cursed hand hath ta'en
The sacred relics from a holy fane,
Feeling the hand of Heaven (enforcing wonder)
In his return, in dreadful cracks of thunder,
Within a bush his sacrilege hath left,
And thinks his punishment freed with the theft:
So fled the swain from one; had Neptune spied
At half an ebb he would have forc'd the tide
To swell anew, whereon his car should sweep,
Deck'd with the riches of th' unsounded deep,
And he from thence would with all state on shore,
To woo this beauty, and to woo no more.
Divine Electra (of the sisters seven
That beautify the glorious orb of heaven)
When Ilium's stately towers serv'd as one light
To guide the ravisher in ugly night
Unto her virgin beds, withdrew her face,
And never would look down on human race
Till this maid's birth; since when some power hath won her
By often fits to shine as gazing on her.
Grim Saturn's son, the dread Olympic Jove,
That dark'd three days to frolic with his love,
Had he in Alcmen's stead clipp'd this fair wight,
The world had slept in everlasting night.
For whose sake only (had she lived then)
Deucalion's flood had never rag'd on men;
Nor Phaeton perform'd his father's duty,
For fear to rob the world of such a beauty:
In whose due praise a learned quill might spend
Hours, days, months, years, and never make an end.
What wretch inhuman, or what wilder blood,
Suck'd in a desert from a tiger's brood,
Could leave her so disconsolate? but one
Bred in the wastes of frost-bit Calydon;
For had his veins been heat with milder air,
He had not wrong'd so foul a maid so fair.