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And with green trail-weeds clambering up its walls,
Roses and every gay and fragrant plant
Before my fancy stands, a fairy bower.
Ay, and within it too do fairies dwell.
Peep through its wreathed window, if indeed
The flowers grow not too close; and there within
Thou'lt see some half a dozen rosy brats,
Eating from wooden bowls their dainty milk—
Those are my mountain elves. Seest thou not
Their very forms distinctly?

I'll gather round my board
All that heaven sends to me of way-worn folks,
And noble travellers, and neighbouring friends,
Both young and old. Within my ample hall,
The worn-out man of arms shall o' tiptoe tread,
Tossing his gray locks from his wrinkled brow,
With cheerful freedom, as he boasts his feats
Of days gone by. Music we'll have; and oft
The bickering dance upon our oaken floors
Shall, thundering loud, strike on the distant ear
Of 'nighted travellers, who shall gladly bend
Their doubtful footsteps towards the cheering din.
Solemn, and grave, and cloistered, and demure,
We shall not be. Will this content ye, damsels?

Every season

Shall have its suited pastime: even winter
In its deep noon, when mountains piled with snow,
And choked-up valleys from our mansion bar
All entrance, and nor guest nor traveller
Sounds at our gate; the empty hall forsaken,
In some warm chamber, by the crackling fire,
We'll hold our little, snug, domestic court,
Plying our work with song and tale between.

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ONE day, as he did raunge the fields abroad,
Whilest his faire Pastorella was elsewhere,
He chaunst to come, far from all people's troad,
Unto a place, whose pleasaunce did appere
To passe all others on the earth which were:
For all that ever was by nature's skill
Devizd to worke delight was gatherd there;
And there by her were poured forth at fill,
As if, this to adorne, she all the rest did pill.

It was an hill plaste in an open plaine,

That round about was borderd with a wood
Of matchlesse hight, that seemd th' earth to disdaine;
In which all trees of honour stately stood,
And did all winter as in sommer bud,
Spredding pavilions for the birds to bowre,
Which in their lower braunches sung aloud;
And in their tops the soring hauke did towre,
Sitting like king of fowles in majesty and powre:

And at the foote thereof a gentle flud

His silver waves did softly tumble downe,
Unmard with ragged mosse or filthy mud;
Ne mote wylde beastes, ne mote the ruder clowne,
Thereto approch; ne filth mote therein drowne:
But nymphes and faeries by the bancks did sit
In the wood's shade which did the waters crowne,
Keeping all noysome things away from it,
And to the waters fall tuning their accents fit.

And on the top thereof a spacious plaine

Did spred itselfe, to serve to all delight,

Either to daunce, when they to daunce would faine,
Or else to course about their bases light;
Ne ought there wanted, which for pleasure might
Desired be, or thence to banish bale:

So pleasauntly the hill with equall hight
Did seeme to overlooke the lowly vale;
Therefore it rightly cleeped was Mount Acidale.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
BORN, 1564; DIED, 1616.

DESCRIPTION OF CLEOPATRA SAILING DOWN THE
CYDNUS.

THE barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver;
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description; she did lie

In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue),
O'erpicturing that Venus, where we see
The fancy out-work nature: on each side her,
Stood pretty, dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,`
And made their bends adorning; at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,

THE BOWER.

That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And make a gap in nature.

BEN JONSON.

BORN, 1574; Died, 1637.

371

THE BOWER.

MILD-BREATHING Zephyr, father of the spring,
Who in the verdant meads doth reign sole king,
Who, sheltered here shrunk from the wintry day,
And careless slept the stormy hours away,

Hath roused himself, and shook his feathers wet
With purple swelling odours, and hath let
The sweet and fruitful dew fall on this ground,
To force out all the flowers that might be found.
The gaudy peacock boasts not in his train

So many lights and shadows, nor the rain

Heaven-painted bow, when that the sun doth court her;
Nor purple pheasant, while his mate doth sport her,
To hear him crow, and with a beauteous pride

Wave his discoloured neck and purple side.
I have not seen the place could more surprise,.
More beautiful in nature's varied dyes.
Lo! the blue bind-weed doth itself unfold
With honeysuckle, and both these entwine
Themselves with briony and jessamine,
To cast a kind and odoriferous shade.
The balmy west wind blows, and every sense
Is soothed and courted:-trees have got their heads,
The fields their coats, the dewy shining meads

Do boast the pansy, lily, and the rose,
And every flower doth laugh as zephyr blows.
The seas are now more even than the earth,
Or gently swell as curled by zephyr's breath;
The rivers run as smoothed by his hand;
The wanton heifer through the grassy land
Plays wildly free, her horns scarce budding yet;
While in the sunny fields the new-dropt lambs
Gambol, rejoicing round their milky dams.
Hark! how each bough a several music yields ;
The lusty throstle, early nightingale,
Accord in tune, though vary in their tale,
The chirping swallow, called forth by the sun,
And crested lark, doth her division run.
The yellow bees the air with music fill,
The finches carol, and the turtles bill.

WILLIAM BROWN.
BORN, 1590; DIED, 1645.

A DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH.

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 in a pond, the trimming of the sedge;
Here the fine setting of well-shaded 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

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