And pomp and feast and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry-
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learnéd sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

7. 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,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

8. That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed

Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

John Milton.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. What have you read of Milton? Rank of Milton as a poet? (Next after Shakespeare, who is the greatest, or perhaps after Chaucer, who is placed by some, with good reason, next to Shakespeare. After Milton, Spenser comes next. What have you read of these other great writers?) " L'Allegro" (läl-la'gro) (means the merry, hence "Mirth "). A long passage is omitted at the close of the first part, and a few lines also at the beginning.

II. Läugh'-ter (läf'-), nymph (nimf), hŏn'-or (ōn'ēr), ĕg'-lan-tine, whis'-tleş (bwis'lz), blithe, scythe (sith), knights (nīts), trī'-umphs, antique', pag'-eant-ry (paj'ent-ry), linked (lingkt), link'-éd, E-ly'-sian (e-lizh'an), Or'-pheūs (-fus), Eu-rỷd'-i-çe.

III. Mark the meter of the first five lines. Make a list of ten words in which ing implies present time. "Her grace whom all commend " (whom refers to her).

IV. Quips, derides, dappled, hoar, amber, “liveries dight," whets, Hymen, revelry.

V. "Weeds of peace." "Hebe's cheek." Soft Lydian airs." Explain the classic allusions in " Orpheus," "Elysian," "Pluto," "half-regained Eurydice." Make a list of objects personified in the poem. What metaphor in the words, "scatters the rear of darkness thin"? Who are the "dames" referred to (3)? "Jonson's learnéd sock" (Ben Jonson, noted for his learned dramas). What is meant by "sock"? What time of day is described in the 3d and 4th stanzas? Of what country is the scenery? Quote short passages from this poem that you think remarkable for beauty, or for felicity of expression.

CXXXIX.-OLD AGE.

1. There is a period when the apple tree blossoms with its fellows of the wood and field. How fair a time it is! All Nature is woosome and winning; the material world celebrates its vegetable loves, and the flower bells, touched by the winds of spring, usher in the universal marriage of Nature. Beast, bird, insect, reptile, fish, plant, lichen, with their prophetic colors spread, all float forward on the tide of new life.

2. Then comes the summer. Many a blossom falls fruitless to the ground, littering the earth with beauty, never to be used. Thick leaves hide the process of creation, which first blushed public in the flowers, and now unseen goes on. For so life's most deep and fruitful hours are hid in mystery. Apples are growing on

every tree; all summer long they grow, and in early

autumn.

3. At length the fruit is fully formed; the leaves begin to fall, letting the sun approach more near. The apple hangs there yet-not to grow, only to ripen. Weeks long it clings to the tree; it gains nothing in size and weight. Externally, there is increase of beauty.

4. Having finished the form from within, Nature brings out the added grace of color. It is not a tricksy fashion painted on, but an expression which of itself comes out a fragrance and a loveliness of the apple's innermost. Within, at the same time, the component elements are changing.

5. The apple grows mild and pleasant. It softens, sweetens-in one word, it mellows. Some night, the vital forces of the tree get drowsy, and the autumn, with gentle breath, just shakes the bough; the expectant fruit lets go its hold, full-grown, full-ripe, full-colored too, and, with plump and happy sound, the apple falls into the autumn's lap, and the spring's marriage promise is complete.

6. Such is the natural process which each fruit goes through, blooming, growing, ripening. The same divine law is appropriate for every kind of animal, from the lowest reptile up to imperial man. It is very beautiful.

7. The parts of the process are perfect; the whole is complete. Birth is human blossom; youth, manhood, they are our summer growth; old age is ripeness. The hands let go the mortal bough: that is natural death.

8. I can not tell where childhood ends and manhood begins, nor where manhood ends and old age begins. It is a wavering and uncertain line, not straight and definite, which borders betwixt the two. But the out

ward characteristics of old age are obvious enough. The weight diminishes.

9. Man is commonly heaviest at forty, woman at fifty. After that the body shrinks a little; the height shortens as the cartilages become thin and dry. The hair whitens and falls away. The frame stoops; the bones become smaller, feebler, have less animal and more mere earthy matter. The senses decay, slowly and handsomely.

10. The eye is not so sharp, and, while it penetrates farther into space, it has less power clearly to define the outline of what it sees. The ear is dull; the appetite less. Bodily heat is lower; the breath produces less carbonic acid than before. The old man consumes less food, water, air. The hands grasp less strongly; the feet less firmly tread.

11. The lungs suck the breast of heaven with less powerful collapse. The eye and ear take not so strong a hold upon the world;

"and the big manly voice,

Turning again to childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound."

12. The animal life is making ready to go out. The very old man loves the sunshine and the fire, the armchair and the shady nook. A rude wind would jostle the full-grown apple from its bough, full-ripe, full-colored too. The internal characteristics correspond. General activity is less. Salient love of new things and of new persons, which bit the young man's heart, fades away. He thinks the old is better.

13. Divers diseases invade the flesh in old age, which, most of them, it seems to me, come from our general

ignorance, or the violation of Nature's laws. Childhood is unnatural. Half the human race is cradled in the arms of Death. The pains we bear in youth are unnatural. So are many of the pains of old age. The old lion, buffalo, eagle, elephant, dies as the apple falls from the tree, with little pain.

14. So have I seen a pine tree in the woods, old, dry at its root, weak in its limbs, capped with age-resembling snow; it stood there, and seemed like to stand; but a little touch of wind drove it headlong, and it fell with long-resounding crash. The next morning the woodsman is astonished that the old tree lies prostrate on the ground. This is a natural death, for the old tree and the venerable man.

15. But our cradle and couch are haunted now with disease, which I doubt not wisdom, knowledge of Nature's laws, and the true religion of the flesh, will one day enable us to avoid. Now, sickness attends our rising up and our lying down. These infirmities I pass by.

16. The man reaps in his old age as he sowed in his youth and manhood. He ripens what he grew. The quantity and the quality of his life are the result of all his time. If he has been faithful to his better nature, true to his conscience and his heart and his soul, in his old age he often reaps a most abundant reward in the richest delight of his own quiet consciousness.

17. Private selfishness is less now than ever before. He loves the eternal justice of God, the great Higher Law. Once his hot blood tempted him, and he broke perhaps that law; now he thinks thereof with grief at the wrong he made others suffer, though he clasps his hands and thanks God for the lesson he has learned even from his sin.