Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/417

 POEMS IN VARIOUS METRES

��375

��Lsetaque frondentis gestans umbracula

palmse,

Sternum perages immortales hymenseos, Cautus ubi, choreisque furit lyra mista

beatis, Festa Sionseo bacchantur et Orgia thyrso."

��glad palms in thy hand, thou dost ever act and act again the immortal nuptials, there where siugiug is, and the lyre mixes madly with the chorals beatific, and the wild orgies rage under the thyrsus of Sion.

��AD JOANNEM ROUSIUM

OXONIENSIS ACADEMLE BIBLIOTHECARIUM January 23, 1646

De libra Poematum amisso, quern ille sibi denuo mitti postulabat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliothecd Publicd reponeret, Ode.

Ode tribus constat Stropbis, totidemque Antistrpphis, unS demum Epodo clausis ; quas, tametsi omnes nee versuum numero nee certis ubique colis exacte respondeant, ita tamen secuimus, commode legendi potius quara ad antiquos concinendi modes rationem spectantes. Alioquiu hoc genus rectius fortasse dici mono- strophicum debuerat. Metra partim sunt KO.TO. cr^eo-ii', partim diroAeAvfieVa. Phaleucia quae sunt spon- daeuui tertio loco bis admittunt, quod idem in secundo loco Catullus ad libitum fecit.

TO JOHN ROUSE

��LIBRARIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

On a book of poems, which he (the Librarian of Oxford) lately asked to be sent to him, in order that he might place it with the author's other works in the public library, and which was lost on the journey. An Ode.

��In 1040, John Rouse, Librarian of the Bod- leian, applied to Milton for copies of all the works which he had published, in order that a complete set might be deposited in the library. Milton accordingly sent his 1045 volume of English and Latin poems (" double book in a single binding,") together with the eleven prose pamphlets written between 1641 and 1644. The pamphlets arrived safely, but the volume of poems was lost or stolen on the journey. Rouse then applied for another copy, which Milton sent, accompanying it with the following half- serious ode, addressed to the lost book. The references in it to the troubled state of Eng- land were rendered particularly pertinent by the fact that at the time of writing Oxford

STROPHE I

GEMELLE cultu simplici gaudens liber, Fronde licet gemina, Munditieque nitens non operosa, Quam mantis attulit Jnvenilis olira

Sedula, tamen haud nimii poeta3; Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras, Nunc Britannica per vireta lusit, Insons populi, barbitoque devius

��was the headquarters of the Cavalier army, and all academic routine had been broken up. Milton looks forward, rather wistfully and wearily, to the time when the Muses of learn- ing shall be recalled to their old abodes, and the ' ' harpy pest " of royal soldiery be driven away. He sees in the placing of his own books in the care of a sedulous scholar, and in the shadow of a great library, an earnest of the time when " a distant generation, an age of sounder hearts, will render fairer judgment on all things." To get the full force of the pas- sage, we must remember that Milton had just come to the end of the divorce controversy, which had exhausted him with its passion and bitterness.

STROPHE I

DOUBLE book in a single binding, crowned mayhap with double laurel, bright with un- studied adornment lavished in time past by my boyish hand, a sedulous hand, but not yet overmuch a poet's, while I played through Italy's forest-shade or over the green fields of England, in those days when, still innocent of my nation's troubles, I

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