Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone :
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!

Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!

Quiet consummation have ;

And renowned be thy grave!

W. Shakespeare.

LAST LINES.

(Verses believed to have been written in his Bible the night

before his Execution, Oct. 29, 1618.)

EVEN such is time, that takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up I trust.

Sir W. Raleigh.

BOOK THE SECOND.

93

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

(II. 3, to the end.)

WOODS, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles, that crown th' Egean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves
In lingering lab'rinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of anguish!
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathed around;
Every shade and hallowed fountain
Murmured deep a solemn sound:
Till the said Nine, in Greece's evil hour,

Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.

Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,
To him the mighty mother did unveil

Her awful face: the dauntless child
Stretched forth his little arm and smiled.
'This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year: