
JOHN MILTON 47 
living in the soft English country finds expression. 
Nothing more beautiful has come from human pen. 
In the first one, the poet addresses the fair goddess of 
Mirth, “so buxom, blithe, and debonair.” In her com- 
pany he fain would dwell, 
‘In unreproved pleasures free ; 
To hear the lark begin his flight, 
And singing startle the dull night, 
From his watch-tower in the skies, 
Till the dappled dawn doth rise. 
* * * * 
While the cock with lively din 
Scatters the rear of darkness thin, 
And to the stack, or the barn door, 
Stoutly struts his dames before.” 
In the bright morning thus ushered in, our poet would 
go forth on his walk, 
** By hedge row elms on hillocks green, 
* * * * 
While the ploughman near at hand 
Whistles o’er the furrowed land, 
And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 
And the mower whets his scythe, 
And every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale.” 
As he goes on his way a series of exquisite, home- 
like landscape pictures, such as can be seen nowhere 
else in such perfection as in England, greets his eye. 
‘Russet lawns and fallows gray, 
Where the nibbling flocks do stray, 
Mountains on whose barren breast 
The labouring clouds do often rest ; 
Meadows trim with daisies pied, 
Shallow brooks and rivers wide. 
