Adonis turn'd to Flora's fav'rite flow'r! Yield, Heroines, yield, and ye who shar'd th'embrace Of Jupiter in ancient times, give place; Give place ye turban'd Fair of Persia's coast, And ye, not less renown'd, Assyria's boast! Submit, ye nymphs of Greece! Ye once the bloom 70 Of Ilion,9 and all ye of haughty Rome, Who swept of old her theatres with trains Redundant, and still live in classic strains! To British damsels beauty's palm is due, Aliens! to follow them is fame for you. Oh city,10 founded by Dardanian hands, Whose towering front the circling realm commands, Too blest abode! no loveliness we see In all the earth, but it abounds in thee. The virgin multitude that daily meets, 80 Radiant with gold and beauty, in thy streets, Outnumbers all her train of starry fires With which Diana gilds thy lofty spires. Fame says, that wafted hither by her doves, With all her host of quiver-bearing Loves, Venus, prefering Paphian scenes no more, Has fix'd her empire on thy nobler shore. But lest the sightless boy inforce my stay, I leave these happy walls, while yet I may. Immortal Moly11 shall secure my heart 90 From all the sorc'ry of Circaean art, And I will e'en repass Cam's reedy pools To face once more the warfare of the Schools. Meantime accept this trifle; Rhymes, though few, Yet such as prove thy friend's remembrance true. 1 Diodati was a schoolfellow of Milton at St. Paul's, of Italian extraction, nephew of Giovanni Diodati, the translator of the Bible into Italian, and son of Theodore Diodati, a physician of eminence, who married and settled in England. charles Diodati's early death formed the subject of The "Epitaphium Damonis" ("The Death of Damon"). 2 The Dee of Chester. 3 The Vergivian Sea, so called by Ptolemy, was the Irish Sea between England and Ireland. 4 Cambridge. 5 Milton had been rusticated (suspended) on account of a quarrel with his tutor, Chappell. 6 Chappell. 7 Ovid. 8 In Thebes--the guilty lords are Eteocles and Polynices the brothers-sons of Oedipus and Jocasta, who fell in their unnatural strife. 9 Troy. 10 London. The Dardanian (i.e. Trojan) hands are those of Brutus, the legendary founder of London. 11 The magical plant by which Odysseus was enabled to escape from Circe. See Homer (Odyssey, x. 370-375). ELEGY II On the Death of the University Beadle at Cambridge.1 Thee, whose refulgent staff and summons clear, Minerva's flock longtime was wont t'obey, Although thyself an herald, famous here, The last of heralds, Death, has snatch'd away. He calls on all alike, nor even deigns To spare the office that himself sustains. Thy locks were whiter than the plumes display'd By Leda's paramour2 in ancient time, But thou wast worthy ne'er to have decay'd, Or, Aeson-like,3 to know a second prime, 10 Worthy for whom some Goddess should have won New life, oft kneeling to Apollo's son.4