But yet will I rear your throne

Again in golden sheen:

'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone, My dark Rosaleen !

My own Rosaleen!

'Tis you shall have the golden throne, 'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone, My dark Rosaleen!

Over dews, over sands,

Will I fly for your weal;
Your holy, delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel.
At home, in your emerald bowers,
From morning's dawn till e'en,

You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers,

My dark Rosaleen !

My own Rosaleen

You'll think of me through daylight's hours,
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!

I could scale the blue air,

I could plough the high hills!
O I could kneel all night in prayer
To heal your many ills!

And one beamy smile from you

Would float like light between My toils and me, my own, my true, My dark Rosaleen!

My own Rosaleen!

Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew.

My dark Rosaleen !

J. C. MANGAN

28. THE SHEPHERD'S ESTATE

HAPPIEST

(FROM "THE PURPLE ISLAND ")

THRICE, O thrice happy shepherd's life and state, When courts are happiness' unhappy pawns! His cottage low, and safely humble gate,

Shuts out proud Fortune with her scorns and fawns:

No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep : Singing all day, his flock he learns to keep; Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.

No serian worms 1 he knows, that with their thread Draw out their silken lives :-nor silken pride! His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need, Not in that proud Sidonian tincture 2 dyed;

No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright; Nor begging wants his middle fortune bite : But sweet content exiles both misery and spite. Instead of music, and base flattering tongues, Which wait to first salute my lord's uprise, The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs, And birds' sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes. In country plays is all the strife he uses; Or sing, or dance, unto the rural Muses; And but in music's sports, all difference refuses.

His certain life, that never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content : 1 Silk worms. Lat. sericus, silken, from seres (either a corruption of the Chinese word for silk, or the ancient name of the Chinese themselves). 2 Tyrian purple.

Serian

=

The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades, till noon-tide's rage is spent: His life is neither tost in boisterous seas

Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease; Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.

His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps, While by his side his faithful spouse hath place : His little son into his bosom creeps,

The lively picture of his father's face:

;

Never his humble house or state torment him
Less he could like, if less his God had sent

him ;

And when he dies, green turf, with grassy tomb, content him.

The world's great Light his lowly state hath blessed, And left His Heaven to be a shepherd base: Thousand sweet songs He to His pipe addressed : Swift rivers stood, beasts, trees, stones, ran apace,

And serpents flew, to hear His softest strains:1 He fed His flock where rolling Jordan reigns; There took our rags, gave us His robes, and bore our pains.

P. FLETCHER

1 This christianising of the ancient mythologies is common in literature. So Milton:

the mighty Pan

Was kindly come to live with them below."

It is possible that Fletcher alludes to a fresco in the Roman Catacombs (then only recently re-opened), which is supposed to represent our Lord in the character of Orpheus.

29-IL PENSEROSO 1

HENCE, vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly, without father bred ! How little you bestead

Or fill the fixèd mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of 2 Morpheus' train.

But hail! thou Goddess sage and holy !
Hail! divinest Melancholy !

Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view

O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue-
Black, but such as in esteem

Prince Memnon's sister 3 might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen 4 that strove
To set her beauty's praise above

The sea nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended :
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore :5

1 The Contemplative Man.

2 i.e. The body-guard composing.

3 Hemera.

4 Cassiopeia, the mother of Andromeda.

5 This parentage, like that of the spurious "Melancholy" of L'Allegro, is of course invented.

His daughter she (in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain):
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,

3

While yet there was no fear of Jove.1
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure;
All in a robe of darkest grain,2
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole 3 of cypres 4 lawn
Over thy decent 5 shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till,

With a sad leaden downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with Gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring

Aye round about Jove's altar sing;
And add to these retired Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
But, first and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,

1 See Hyperion (Part II).

2 Purple.

Granum meant first "seed," then the dried body of the coccus (a kind of cochineal), then the dyes made from it, then the dyes called " Tyrian purple."'

3 Here, probably, hood or veil.

4 Crape.

5 Comely.

6 Fixed.