Il Penseroso

rdf:langString Il Penseroso

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rdf:langString And as I wake, sweet musick breath Above, about, or underneath, Sent by som spirit to mortals good, Or th'unseen Genius of the Wood. But let my due feet never fail, To walk the studious Cloysters pale, And love the high embowed Roof With antick Pillars massy proof, And storied Windows richly dight, Casting a dimm religious light. There let the pealing Organ blow, To the full voic'd Quire below, In Service high, and Anthems cleer, As may with sweetnes, through mine ear... Dissolve me into extasies, And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes.

rdf:langString ... let my Lamp at midnight hour, Be seen in some high lonely Tow'r, Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, With thrice great Hermes, or unsphear The spirit of Plato to unfold What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold The immortal mind hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook: And of those Daemons that are found In fire, air, flood, or under ground...

rdf:langString ... pensive Nun, devout and pure, Sober, stedfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestick train, And sable stole of Cipres Lawn, Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Com, but keep thy wonted state, With eev'n step, and musing gate, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: There held in holy passion still, Forget thy self to Marble, till With a sad Leaden downward cast, Thou fix them on the earth as fast.

rdf:langString And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew, And every Herb that sips the dew; Till old experience do attain To somthing like prophetic strain. These pleasures Melancholy give, And I with thee will choose to live.

rdf:langString But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy Whose Saintly visage is too bright To hit the Sense of human sight; And therefore to our weaker view, O'er laid with black, staid Wisdoms hue.

rdf:langString Hence vain deluding Joys, The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes; Dwell in som idle brain And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train.

rdf:langString Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore, To solitary Saturn bore; His daughter she ;

rdf:langString And if ought else, great Bards beside, In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of Turneys and of Trophies hung; Of Forests, and inchantments drear, Where more is meant then meets the ear. Thus night oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appeer...

rdf:langString Thee Chauntress oft the Woods among I woo to hear thy even-Song; And missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven Green, To behold the wandring Moon, Riding neer her highest noon, Like one that had bin led astray Through the Heav'ns wide pathles way;

rdf:langString And when the Sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me Goddess bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown that Sylvan loves Of Pine, or monumental Oake, Where the rude Ax with heaved stroke, Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt.

rdf:langString Il Penseroso ("the thinker") is a poem by John Milton, first found in the 1645/1646 quarto of verses The Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, published by Humphrey Moseley. It was presented as a companion piece to L'Allegro, a vision of poetic mirth. The speaker of this reflective ode dispels "vain deluding Joys" from his mind in a ten-line prelude, before invoking "divinest Melancholy" to inspire his future verses. The melancholic mood is idealised by the speaker as a means by which to "attain / To something like prophetic strain," and for the central action of Il Penseroso – which, like L'Allegro, proceeds in couplets of iambic tetrameter – the speaker speculates about the poetic inspiration that would transpire if the imagined goddess of Melancholy he invokes were his Muse. The highly digressive style Milton employs in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso dually precludes any summary of the poems' dramatic action as it renders them interpretively ambiguous to critics. However, it can surely be said that the vision of poetic inspiration offered by the speaker of Il Penseroso is an allegorical exploration of a contemplative paradigm of poetic genre.