Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/389

 POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES

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��At fila rupit Persephone tua, Irata cum te viderit artibus Succoque pollenti tot atris

Faucibus eripuisse Mortis. Colende Prseses, membra precor tua Molli quiescant cespite, et ex tuo Crescant rosse calthaeque busto, Purpureoque hyacinthus ore. Sit mite de te jndicium ^Eaci, Subrideatque JEtnssa, Proserpina, Interque felices perennis Elysio spatiere campo !

��awful abyss. But Persephone slit the thread of your life, angry when she saw how many lives you snatched from the black jaws of death by the art of your potent medicines. Loved master, I pray that your limbs may rest quiet beneath the sod, and that from your grave roses may spring, and marigold, and the purple-mouthed hyacinth. May ^acus pronounce judgment mildly on you, and Proserpina give you a furtive smile, and may you walk forever in the Elysiau fields among the blessed.

��IN QUINTUM NOVEMBRIS Anno atatis 17

ON THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER, ANNIVERSARY OF THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

��The Gunpowder Plot, with the accessories which popular bigotry and ignorance accumu- lated around it, was long a favorite subject for academic versifying. The most elaborate ef- fort in this kind is the Locustce, or Apollyonists, of Phineas Fletcher, a Cambridge university poet whose work had a traceable influence upon Stilton's later production. After Fletcher's Locustce, the present poem, written in 1626, for

JAM pius extremti veniens lacobus ab arcto Teucrigenas populos, lateque patentia regna Albionum tenuit, jamque inviolabile foedus Sceptra Caledoniis conjunxerat Anglica

Scotis:

Pacificusque novo, felix divesque, sedebat In solio, occultique doli securus et hostis: Cum ferus ignifluo regnans Acheronte ty-

ranntis, Eumenidum pater, sethereo vagus exul

Olympo, Forte per immensum terrarum erraverat

orbem, Dinumerans sceleris socios, vernasque

fideles, 10

Participes regni post f unera moasta futures. Hie tempestates medio ciet ae're diras; Illic unanimes odium struit inter amicos: Armat et invictas in mutua viscera gentes, Regnaque olivifenl vertit florentia pace; Et quoscunque videt pura3 virtutis amantes, Hos cupit adjicere imperio, fraudumque

magister Tentat inaccessum sceleri corrumpere pec-

tus;

��the twenty-first anniversary of Guy Fawkes's Day. is perhaps the most notable. It is a very youthful performance, turgid in style and un- restrained in its vituperation of Catholicism ; but it has certain Miltonic qualities notwith- standing, oddly distorted by the double con- vention of matter and of manner to which the young poet is here subjected.

��GOOD King James, coming from the far north, had begun his rule over the descend- ants of Brut and the broad realms of Al- bion, and inviolable treaty had joined the sceptres of England and Scotland. Rich, happy, and at peace, he was sitting in his new land, secure both from open enemies and from secret guile. But the fierce ty- rant who rules over Acheron's fiery flood, the father of the Eumenides, the rest- less outcast from Heaven, was wandering through the world, numbering his associ- ates in evil and his faithful slaves, sharers after death in his sad realms. Here he rouses dire tempests in mid-air; there he puts hatred between loving friends. He in- cites invincible peoples to war against each other, and lays waste kingdoms that bloom with the olive of peace. Whomever he sees in love with purity and virtue, he longs to subdue to his rule ; and he tries with all his master-arts of fraud to corrupt breasts into which evil has no entrance. He lays silent

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