Quotes
Quotes - Milton
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair.
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears
And slits the thin-spun life.
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark.
The pilot of the Galilean lake;
Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
He touch'd the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles.
Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come and trip it as ye go,
On the light fantastic toe.
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.
Herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses.
To many a youth and many a maid
Dancing in the chequer'd shade.
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.
Tower'd cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men.
Ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize.
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
And ever against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out.
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.
The gay motes that people the sunbeams.
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.
