Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: College, Cambridge. The corrupted clergy, who make so splendid and, as some think, so irrelevant an appearance in Lycidas, figure frequently, either directly or by implication, in the long list of themes. Without misgiving or regret, when the time came, Milton shut the gate on the sequestered paradise of his youth, and hastened downward to join the fighters in the plain. Before we follow him we may well " interpose a little ease" by looking at some of the beauties proper to the earlier poems, and listening to some of the simple pastoral melodies that were drowned when the organ began to blow. L Allegro is full of them— Sometimes, with secure delight, The upland hamlets will invite, When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the chequered shade, And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday. That is Merry England of Shakespeare's time. But already the controversy concerning the Book of Sports had begun to darken the air. Already the Maypole, that "great stinking idol," as an Elizabethan Puritan called it, had been doomed to destruction. Some years before L'Allegro was written, a bard, who hailed from Leeds, had lamented its downfall in the country of his nativity— Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes, (For then true love and amity was found) When every village did a May-pole raise, And Whitson Ales and May games did abound : And all the lusty Yonkers in a rout With merry Lasses danced the rod about; Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests, And poor men far'd the better for their feasts. The next verse recalls that scene in the Winter s Tale where Shakespeare draws a vivid picture of Elizabethan country merrymaking— The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and Towe...