50 JOHN MILTON 
Where the rude axe with heavied stroke 
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, 
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. 
There in close covert by some brook, 
Where no profaner eye may look, 
Hide me from Day’s garish eye, 
While the bee with honeyed thigh, 
That at her flowery work doth sing, 
And the waters murmuring 
With such consort as they keep, 
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.” 
Best known of all the passages in this pair of poems is 
that in which the poet repairs from the brookside to the 
studious cloister, with reminiscences of Cambridge and 
that glorious chapel with its “ high embowed roof” and 
“storied windows,” its “pealing organs” and “full- 
voiced choir,” whence the thought is carried on to 
the hermitage with its mossy cell, where the story 
ends as it started with the delights of science: — 
“Where I may sit and rightly spell 
Of every star that heaven doth shew, 
And every herb that sips the dew ; 
Till old experience do attain 
To something like poetic strain. 
These pleasures, Melancholy, give, 
And I with thee will choose to live.” 
These twin poems belong to the class of pastorals 
such as were written by Theocritus and Virgil. A 
third poem, of similar construction, written at Horton 
in 1637, has ever since been recognized as the most 
perfect specimen in existence of that kind of poetry. 
The framework of “Lycidas” is purely conventional ; 
no one but a scholar steeped to the marrow of his bones 
