575. The Apparition of His Mistress Calling Him to Elysium

Come then, and like two doves with silv'ry wings,Let our souls fly to th' shades where ever springsSit smiling in the meads; where balm and oil,Roses and cassia crown the untill'd soil.Where no disease reigns, or infection comesTo blast the air, but ambergris and gumsThis, that, and ev'ry thicket doth transpire,More sweet than storax from the hallowed fire,Where ev'ry tree a wealthy issue bearsOf fragrant apples, blushing plums, or pears;And all the shrubs, with sparkling spangles, shewLike morning sunshine tinselling the dew.Here in green meadows sits eternal May,Purfling the margents, while perpetual daySo double gilds the air, as that no nightCan ever rust th' enamel of the light.Here, naked younglings, handsome striplings, runTheir goals for virgins' kisses; which when done,Then unto dancing forth the learned roundCommixed they meet, with endless roses crown'd.And here we'll sit on primrose-banks, and seeLove's chorus led by Cupid; and we'll beTwo loving followers, too, unto the groveWhere poets sing the stories of our love.There thou shalt hear divine Musæus singOf Hero and Leander; then I'll bringThee to the stand, where honour'd Homer readsHis Odysseys and his high Iliads;About whose throne the crowd of poets throngTo hear the incantation of his tongue:To Linus, then to Pindar; and that done,I'll bring thee, Herrick, to Anacreon,Quaffing his full-crown'd bowls of burning wine,And in his raptures speaking lines of thine,Like to his subject; and as his franticLooks show him truly Bacchanalian-likeBesmear'd with grapes, welcome he shall thee thither,Where both may rage, both drink and dance together.Then stately Virgil, witty Ovid, byWhom fair Corinna sits, and doth complyWith ivory wrists his laureate head, and steepsHis eye in dew of kisses while he sleeps;Then soft Catullus, sharp-fang'd Martial,And towering Lucan, Horace, Juvenal,And snaky Persius, these, and those, whom rage(Dropt for the jars of heaven) fill'd t' engageAll times unto their frenzies,--thou shalt thereBehold them in a spacious theatre.Among which glories, crowned with sacred baysAnd flatt'ring ivy, two recite their plays--Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all earsListen, while they, like syrens in their spheres,Sing their Evadne; and still more for theeThere yet remains to know than thou can'st seeBy glim'ring of a fancy. Do but come,And there I'll show thee that capacious roomIn which thy father Jonson now is plac'd,As in a globe of radiant fire, and grac'dTo be in that orb crown'd, that doth includeThose prophets of the former magnitude,And he one chief; but hark, I hear the cock(The bellman of the night) proclaim the clockOf late struck one, and now I see the primeOf day break from the pregnant east: 'tis timeI vanish; more I had to say,But night determines here, away.