Miscellaneous Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

As he whose footsteps by some ancient stream,
Tibur, or old Ilissus chance upturn
Of time-forgotten, sculptured trunk, or urn,
Work of the Phidian chisel, as may seem
Inimitable,—straight as from a dream
Waketh, nor hasteneth onward, till he learn
Wondering, each grace, each beauty,—so did burn
My heart, when first by thee disclosed, the gleam
It caught of Milton's page, by envious Crime
And dust and worms deform'd—Oh! well hast thou
And fitliest, paid the debt though late—that prime
And holy song requiting —by old Time
Remembered, which twin lustre sheds e'en now
On thee, and elder Winton's mitred brow.

“Milton wrote, in his seventeenth year, an elegy on the death of this blameless Bishop,—Bishop Andrews; which Mr. Mitford well characterises as Milton's ‘prime and holy song!’ See his Sonnet to the Aldine edition of Milton.”—Bishop Jebb, in his edition of Burnet's Iives, p. 284.