SPRING AND THE POETS. 457 



The merry cuckoo, messenger of Spring, 

 His trumpet shrill hath thrice already sounded, 

 That warns all lovers wait upon their king, 

 Who now is coming forth with girland crowned : 

 With noise whereof the quire of birds resounded 

 Their anthems sweet devised of love's praise, 

 That all the woods their echoes back rebounded, 

 As if they knew the meaning of their lays. 

 ****** 



Fresh Spring, the herald of love's mighty king, 

 In whose coat armour richly are displaid 

 All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring, 

 In goodly colours gloriously array'd." 



A multitude of delightful fragments might be picked from the 

 " Faery Queene," showing how sensitively the poet was alive to the 

 charms of natural objects, how finely he amplifies the scriptural 

 allusion to the lily. 



*' The lilly lady of the flowering field, 

 The flower-de-luce her lovely paramoure, 

 Bid thee to them thy fruitlesse labours yield, 

 And soon leave off this toylsome weary stoure. 

 Loe, loe ! how brave she decks her bounteous boure 

 With silken curtains, and gold coverletts, 

 Therein to shrowd her sumptuous belamoure : 

 Yet neither spinnes nor cards ne cares nor fretts, 

 But to her mother Nature all her care she letts." 



Milton drank deep from the fountain of the love of nature. 

 Some of his very finest and most magnificent passages are descriptive 

 of her beauties. In his " L' Allegro" he speaks the same language 

 concerning Spring as his immortal predecessors. 



" The frolic wind that breathes the Spring, 

 Zephyr with Aurora playing 

 As he met her once a-maying, 

 There on beds of violets blue, 

 And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew." 



His blindness seems to have heightened the vividness of his sensa- 

 tions, and, as he pours out his song, a gush of eloquence betrays how 

 deeply he felt the harmonies of creation. Eve's lament on quitting 

 Paradise is perhaps the finest piece of pathos in existence. 



" Must I then leave thee, Paradise? thus leave 

 Thee native soil ! these happy walks and shades, 

 Fit haunt for gods ? where I had hoped to spend, 

 Quiet though sad, the respite of that day 

 That must be mortal to us both. O flowers ! 

 My early visitation, and my last 

 At even which I bred up with tender hand 

 From the first opening bud, and gave ye names, 



