Classic Poem

Maiden, arise, replied the new-born maid:
" Pure Innocence the senseless stones will aid. "
Nor of the fairy troop, nor Muses nine,
Nor am I Venus, nor of Proserpine:
But daughter to a lusty aged swain,
That cuts the green tufts off th' enamell'd plain;
And with his scythe hath many a summer shorn
The plough'd-lands lab'ring with a crop of corn;
Who from the cloud-clipt mountain by his stroke
Fells down the lofty pine, the cedar, oak:
He opes the flood-gates as occasion is,
Sometimes on that man's land, sometimes on this.
When Verulam, a stately nymph of yore,
Did use to deck herself on Isis' shore,
One morn (among the rest) as there she stood,
Saw the pure channel all besmear'd with blood;
Inquiring for the cause, one did impart,
Those drops came from her holy Alban's heart;
Herewith in grief, she 'gan entreat my sire,
That Isis' stream, which yearly did attire
Those gallant fields in changeable array,
Might turn her course and run some other way,
Lest that her waves might wash away the guilt
From off their hands which Alban's blood had spilt:
He condescended, and the nimble wave
Her fish no more within that channel drave:
But as a witness left the crimson gore
To stain the earth, as they their hands before.
He had a being ere there was a birth,
And shall not cease until the sea and earth,
And what they both contain, shall cease to be,
Nothing confines him but eternity.
By him the names of good men ever live,
Which short-liv'd men unto oblivion give:
And in forgetfulness he lets him fall,
That is no other man than natural:
'Tis he alone that rightly can discover
Who is the true, and who the feigned lover.
In summer's heat, when any swain to sleep
Doth more addict himself than to his sheep;
And whilst the leaden god sits on his eyes,
If any of his fold or strays or dies,
And to the waking swain it be unknown,
Whether his sheep be dead, or stray'd, or stol'n;
To meet my sire he bends his course in pain,
Either where some high hill surveys the plain;
Or takes his step toward the flow'ry valleys,
Where Zephyr with the cowslip hourly dallies;
Or to the groves, where birds from heat or weather,
Sit sweetly tuning of their notes together;
Or to a mead a wanton river dresses
With richest collars of her turning esses;
Or where the shepherds sit old stories telling,
Chronos, my sire, hath no set place of dwelling;
But if the shepherd meet the aged swain,
He tells him of his sheep, or shows them slain.
So great a gift the sacred Powers of heaven
(Above all others) to my sire have given,
That the abhorred stratagems of night,
Lurking in caverns from the glorious light,
By him (perforce) are from their dungeons hurl'd,
And show'd as monsters to the wond'ring world.
What mariner is he sailing upon
The wat'ry desert-clipping Albion,
Hears not the billows in their dances roar,
Answer'd by echoes from the neighbour shore?
To whose accord the maids trip from the downs,
And rivers dancing come, ycrown'd with towns,
All singing forth the victories of Time
Upon the monsters of the Western clime,
Whose horrid, damned, bloody plots would bring
Confusion on the laureate poet's king,
Whose hell-fed hearts devis'd how never more
A swan might singing sit on Isis' shore:
But croaking ravens, and the screech-owl's cry,
The fit musicians for a tragedy,
Should evermore be heard about her strand,
To fright all passengers from that sad land.
Long summer's days I on his worth might spend,
And yet begin again when I would end.
All ages since the first age first begun,
Ere they could know his worth their age was done:
Whose absence all the treasury of earth
Cannot buy out. From far-fam'd Tagus' birth,
Not all the golden gravel he treads over,
One minute past, that minute can recover.
I am his only child (he hath no other),
Clept Aletheia, born without a mother:
Poor Aletheia, long despis'd of all,
Scarce Charity would lend an hospital
To give my month's cold watching one night's rest,
But in my room took in the miser's chest.