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’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue: 
    Black, but such as in esteem
    Prince Memnon’s sister might beseem
    Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
    To set her beauty’s praise above
    The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended;
    Yet thou art higher far descended;
    Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore
    To solitary Saturn bore;
    His daughter she; in Saturn’s reign
    Such mixture was not held a stain: 
    Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
    He met her, and in secret shades
    Of woody Ida’s inmost grove,
    While yet there was no fear of Jove. 
      Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
    Sober, steadfast, and demure
    All in a robe of darkest grain,
    Flowing with majestic train
    And sable stole of cyprus lawn,
    Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
    Come, but keep thy wonted state,
    With even step and musing gait,
    And looks commercing with the skies,
    Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
    There, held in holy passion still,
    Forget thyself to marble, till
    With a sad leaden downward cast,
    Thou fix them on the earth as fast;
    And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet,
    Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet. 
    And hears the Muses in a ring
    Aye round about Jove’s altar sing;
    And add to these retired Leisure,
    That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
    But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
    Him that yon soars on golden wing,
    Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
    The cherub Contemplation;
    And the mute Silence hist along,
    ’Less Philomel will deign a song
    In her sweetest, saddest plight,
    Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
    While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
    Gently o’er the accustomed oak;
    —­Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly,
    Most musical, most melancholy;
    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 wandering Moon,
    Riding near her highest noon,
    Like one that had been led astray
    Through the heaven’s wide pathless way;
    And oft, as if her head she bowed,
    Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 
      Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
    I hear the far-off Curfew sound
    Over some wide-watered shore,
    Swinging slow with sullen roar. 
      Or, if the air will not permit,
    Some still, removed place will fit,
    Where glowing embers through the room
    Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
    Far from all resort of mirth,