Classic Poem

As in the rainbow's many-colour'd hue,
Here see we watchet deepen'd with a blue:
There a dark tawny with a purple mix'd,
Yellow and flame, with streaks of green betwixt,
A bloody stream into a blushing run,
And ends still with the colour which begun;
Drawing the deeper to a lighter stain,
Bringing the lightest to the deep'st again,
With such rare art each mingleth with his fellow,
The blue with watchet, green and red with yellow;
Like to the changes which we daily see
About the dove's neck with variety,
Where none can say (though he it strict attends)
Here one begins, and there the other ends:
So did the maidens with their various flowers
Deck up their windows, and make neat their bowers:
Using such cunning as they did dispose
The ruddy piny with the lighter rose,
The monkshood with the bugloss, and entwine
The white, the blue, the flesh-like columbine
With pinks, sweet-williams: that far off the eye
Could not the manner of their mixtures spy.
Then with those flowers they most of all did prize,
With all their skill, and in most curious wise
On tufts of herbs and rushes, would they frame
A dainty border round their shepherd's name.
Or posies make, so quaint, so apt, so rare,
As if the Muses only lived there:
And that the after world should strive in vain
What they then did, to counterfeit again.
Nor will the needle nor the loom e'er be
So perfect in their best embroidery,
Nor such composures make of silk and gold,
As theirs, when Nature all her cunning told.
The word of mine did no man then bewitch,
They thought none could be fortunate if rich.
And to the covetous did wish no wrong
But what himself desir'd: to live here long.
As of their songs, so of their lives they deem'd:
Not of the long'st, but best perform'd, esteem'd,
They thought that Heaven to him no life did give,
Who only thought upon the means to live.
Nor wish'd they 'twere ordain'd to live here ever,
But as life was ordain'd they might persever.
O happy men! you ever did possess
No wisdom but was mix'd with simpleness;
So wanting malice and from folly free,
Since reason went with your simplicity,
You search'd yourselves if all within were fair,
And did not learn of others what you were.
Your lives the patterns of those virtues gave,
Which adulation tells men now they have.
With poverty in love we only close,
Because our lovers it most truly shows:
When they who in that blessed age did move,
Knew neither poverty nor want of love.
The hatred which they bore was only this,
That every one did hate to do amiss.
Their fortune still was subject to their will:
Their want (O happy!) was the want of ill.
Ye truest, fairest, loveliest nymphs that can
Out of your eyes lend fire Promethean,
All-beauteous ladies, love-alluring dames,
That on the banks of Isca, Humber, Thames,
By your encouragement can make a swain
Climb by his song where none but souls attain:
And by the graceful reading of our lines
Renew our heat to further brave designs:
You, by whose means my Muse thus boldly says:
Though she do sing of shepherds' loves and lays,
And flagging weakly low gets not on wing
To second that of Helen's ravishing:
Nor hath the love nor beauty of a queen
My subject grac'd, as other works have been;
Yet not to do their age nor ours a wrong,
Though queens, nay, goddesses, fam'd Homer's song:
Mine hath been tun'd and heard by beauties more
Than all the poets that have liv'd before.
Not 'cause it is more worth, but it doth fall
That Nature now is turn'd a prodigal,
And on this age so much perfection spends,
That to her last of treasure it extends;
For all the ages that are slid away
Had not so many beauties as this day.
O what a rapture have I gotten now!
That age of gold, this of the lovely brow
Have drawn me from my song! I onward run
Clean from the end to which I first begun.
But ye, the heavenly creatures of the West,
In whom the virtues and the graces rest,
Pardon! that I have run astray so long,
And grow so tedious in so rude a song,
If you yourselves should come to add one grace
Unto a pleasant grove or such like place,
Where here the curious cutting of a hedge:
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge:
Here the fine setting of well-shading trees:
The walks there mounting up by small degrees,
The gravel and the green so equal lie,
It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye:
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,
Arising from the infinite repair
Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price,
(As if it were another Paradise)
So please the smelling sense, that you are fain
Where last you walk'd to turn and walk again.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing go:
Here further down an over-arched alley,
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spy at end thereof a standing lake,
Where some ingenious artist strives to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of lead
Through birds of earth most lively fashioned)
To counterfeit and mock the sylvans all,
In singing well their own set madrigal.
This with no small delight retains your ear,
And makes you think none blest but who live there.
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree,
Invite your hand to crop some from the stem,
And liking one, taste every sort of them:
Then to the arbours walk, then to the bowers,
Thence to the walks again, thence to the flowers,
Then to the birds, and to the clear spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense.
Here one walks oft, and yet anew begin'th,
As if it were some hidden labyrinth;
So loath to part, and so content to stay,
That when the gard'ner knocks for you away,
It grieves you so to leave the pleasures in it,
That you could wish that you had never seen it:
Blame me not then, if while to you I told
The happiness our fathers clipt of old,
The mere imagination of their bliss
So rapt my thoughts, and made me sing amiss.
And still the more they ran on those days' worth,
The more unwilling was I to come forth.
Oh! if the apprehension joy us so,
What would the action in a human show?
Such were the shepherds (to all goodness bent)
About whose thorps that night curs'd Limos went;
Where he had learn'd that next day all the swains,
That any sheep fed on the fertile plains,
The feast of Pales, goddess of their grounds,
Did mean to celebrate. Fitly this sounds,
He thought, to what he formerly intended,
His stealth should by their absence be befriended:
For whilst they in their off'rings busied were,
He 'mongst the flocks might range with lesser fear.
How to contrive his stealth he spent the night.