Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more

           Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

           I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,

           And with forced fingers rude

           Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

           Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear

           Compels me to disturb your season due:

           For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,

           Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:

           Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew

           Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.

           He must not float upon his watery bier

           Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,

           Without the meed of some melodious tear.

             Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well

           That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;

           Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string;

           Hence with denial vain and coy excuse:

           So may some gentle Muse

           With lucky words favour my destined urn:

           And as he passes, turn

           And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

             For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,

           Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill:

           Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd

           Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,

           We drove a-field, and both together heard

           What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,

           Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

           Oft till the star that rose at evening bright

           Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.

           Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;

           Temper'd to the oaten flute,

           Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel

           From the glad sound would not be absent long;

           And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.

             But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone,

           Now thou art gone and never must return!

           Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,

           With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,

           And all their echoes, mourn.

           The willows and the hazel copses green

           Shall now no more be seen

           Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays:—

           As killing as the canker to the rose,

           Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,

           Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,

           When first the white-thorn blows;

           Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear.

             Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep

           Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

           For neither were ye playing on the steep

           Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,

           Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

           Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.

           Ay me! I fondly dream—

           Had ye been there—for what could that have done?

           What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,

           The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,

           Whom universal nature did lament,

           When by the rout that made the hideous roar

           His gory visage down the stream was sent,

           Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?

             Alas! what boots it with incessant care

           To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade