The Complete Poems

by John Milton

  177. In… love This line is not in 1638.

  178. entertain receive (OED 12).

  saints the blessed dead in Heaven (OED B 1) and the angels (OED 3b, cp. PL vi 46).

  181. wipe… eyes Cp. Rev. 21. 4: ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes’; also Isa. 25. 8, Rev. 7. 17.

  183. Genius local guardian spirit. Cp. the Genius of the Wood in Arcades. Carey notes that ‘in Virgil, Ecl. v 64–5, the dead Daphnis is imagined as a god, being good to his worshippers’. Be good (184) echoes Virgil’s sis bonus.

  186–93. M.’s epilogue forms a stanza of ottava rima

  186 uncouth both ‘unskilled’ and ‘unknown’. M. in 1638 signed Lycidas only with the initials ‘J.M.’.

  188. tender responsive.

  stops finger-holes.

  quills pastoral pipes.

  189. eager thought Contrast the reluctant beginning (4–7).

  Doric Theocritus, Moschus and Bion wrote in the Doric dialect. There was also a Doric mode of music.

  190. stretched… hills The setting sun elongates the hills’ shadows. Cp. Virgil, Ecl. i 83, ii 67.

  192. twitched pulled up around his shoulders.

  mantle blue R. C. Fox, Explicator ix (1951) 54 notes that blue was the colour of hope. Shepherds usually wear grey in pastoral.

  193. pastures new Cp. Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island (1633) vi 77: ’Tomorrow shall ye feast in pastures new’.

  A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle

  Popularly known as Comus since the late seventeenth century, A Masque was performed on 29 September at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire to celebrate the Earl of Bridgewater’s appointment as Lord President of Wales. The Earl’s three children were among the performers: Lady Alice Egerton, aged fifteen, played the Lady, and her brothers John, Viscount Brackley, aged eleven, and Lord Thomas Egerton, aged nine, played the two brothers. Henry Lawes, who was the children’s music tutor, composed the music for the songs and played the part of the Attendant Spirit. It was probably Lawes who invited M. to compose the text. Lawes published the poem in 1637

  The text survives in various versions reflecting several stages of composition. TMS has many corrections and revisions, some added after the performance. Other versions are the Bridgewater manuscript (BMS), the first printed edition (issued anonymously in 1637), the printed text of 1645 (followed here), and that of 1673, which differs significantly from 1645 in only one passage (lines 166–9).

  [Stage direction] Attendant Spirit] 1637, 1645, 1673; a guardian spirit, or daemon TMS, BMS.

  2.. mansion dwelling place (OED 2), with overtones of John 14. 2 (‘in my Father’s house are many mansions’), though the Spirit comes from before Jove’s threshold, not from Heaven.

  3.. insphered placed in a celestial sphere. Cp. Il Penseroso 88–9: ‘unsphere / The spirit of Plato’.

  4.. sérene air the bright, cloudless aether above earth’s atmosphere.

  5.. smoke and stir of earth’s atmosphere and earth’s bustling inhabitants. 5–6. dim spot… Which men call earth See Plato, Phaedo 109–11. What we call ‘the earth’ is but a cloudy hollow in the surface of the true earth, which lies far above us.

  7.. pestered crowded together (OED 3) and plagued (OED 4), as in: ‘pestred with infectious or obnoxious ayres’ (1625).

  pinfold cattle pen, hence ‘place of confinement’ (OED 2).

  8.. frail including ‘transient’ (OED 1b).

  feverish *restless (OED 2) and apt to cause fever (OED 4).

  9.. crown that Virtue gives I Cor. 9. 24–5.

  10.. mortal change both ‘changeful life’ and ‘death’. Cp. ‘quick immortal change’ (841).

  11.. sainted seats Cp. Rev. 4. 4: ‘And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold’. Cp. also Fletcher, CV (1610) iii 53: ‘ye glad Spirits, that now sainted sit / On your coelestiall thrones’.

  13. golden key Cp. Matt. 16. 19: ‘I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven’. Jonson in Hymenaei (1606) equips Truth with ‘a curious bunch of golden kayes, / With which heaven gates she locketh, and displayes’ (897–8). Cp. Lycidas III.

  16. ambrosial *belonging to Paradise (OED Ib).

  weeds the ‘sky-robes’of line 83.

  17.this sin-worn mould either ‘this terrestrial earth [OED “mould” sb16] worn out by sin’ or ‘this earthy body [OED “mould” sb14] which sinners wear as a garment’.

  18.But to my task Cp. John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess (c. 1609) III i 180–81: ‘But to my charge: heere must I stay, / To see what mortalls loose their way’. The speaker is a Satyr, sent by Pan to protect virgins wandering in the wood.

  18–21. Neptune… rule After vanquishing the Titans, Jove and his brothers Pluto and Neptune divided the universe between them by drawing lots. Jove took the sky, Neptune the sea, and Pluto the underworld (Homer, Il. xv 187–93).

  20.nether Jove Pluto. Cp. Homer, Il. ix 457 (‘Zeus of the underworld’) and Virgil, Aen. iv 638 (‘Stygian Jove’).

  21.sea-girt isles Jonson calls Britain ‘This sea-girt isle’ in Underwoods lxvii

  33. Cp. also M.’s translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth in The History of Britain: ‘Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, / Sea-girt it lies’.

  22–3. gems… the deep Cp. Shakespeare, Richard II II i 46: ‘This precious stone set in the silver sea’.

  23.*unadornèd without other ornaments.

  24.tributary paying tribute (as ‘tributary’ rivers).

  25.By course in due order.

  several separate.

  27.this isle mainland Britain.

  28.the main the high sea.

  29.quarters divides into parts. These may be ‘fewer or more than four’ (OED2), but Britain did have a fourfold government (the Lord Presidency of Wales being one).

  30.tract… sun Wales and the Marches. Cp. Aeschylus, Suppliants 254–5: ‘I rule all the region facing the setting sun’.

  31.peer the Earl of Bridgewater.

  mickle great.

  32.tempered awe temperately used authority.

  33.haughty of exalted courage (OED2).

  nation Wales.

  proud in arms Cp. Virgil, Aen. i 21: ‘a people proud in war’ (populum… belloque superbum).

  35. state throne (OED20), pomp befitting high rank (OED17).

  37. pérplexed entangled.

  wood a common symbol for human life. Cp. Dante, Inf. i 1–3, Spenser, FQ I i 7–10.

  38.horror including the Latin sense ‘bristling’.

  39.passenger wayfarer.

  48.After… transformed ‘After the Tuscan sailors had been transformed’. Bacchus turned the pirates who had kidnapped him into dolphins. See Homeric Hymn To Dionysus, and Ovid, Met. iii 582–691.

  49.Tyrrhene shore the west coast of Italy, opposite Corsica and Sardinia. listed wished.

  50–51. Circe’s island… daughter of the Sun Cp. Homer, Od. x 135–8: ‘We came to the island of Aiaia. There lived fair-haired Circe… fathered by Helios’. Cp. also Browne, Inner Temple Masque (performed 1615, printed 1772): ‘mighty Circe daughter to the Sun’ (32).

  50.who knows not Circe Cp. Spenser, Shep. Cal. August 141: ‘Roselend (who knows not Roselend?)’, and FQ VI x 16: ‘Poore Colin Clout, (who knows not Colin Clout?)’.

  51.charmèd cup Circe offered a cup, but used her wand to turn men into beasts (Od. x 233–9, Met. xiv 277–80). M. here omits the wand and so emphasizes the drinker’s moral choice. (In his Inner Temple Masque Browne omits the cup.) When Comus enters (92) he holds both cup and wand and so is equipped for temptation or coercion. The whore of Babylon had ‘a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication’ (Rev. 17. 4). M. in An Apology for Smectymnuus distinguishes between the ‘charming cup’ of chaste love and the ‘thick intoxicating potion’ of lust (YP I. 891–2).

  54. nymph Homer’s Circe is a goddess.
>
  54–5. gazed… youth Cp. Homeric Hymn vii if: ‘I will tell of Dionysus, the son of glorious Semele, how he appeared on a jutting headland by the shore of the fruitless sea, seeming like a stripling in the first flush of manhood: his rich dark hair was waving about him’.

  58.Comus The name is a Latinization of Greek komos, ‘revelry’. Philostratus (Imagines i 2) describes Comus as an effeminate youth, crowned with roses, and carrying a torch. He stands outside a marriage chamber, falling into a drunken sleep. Jonson associates Comus with Bacchus and Priapus in Poetaster (1602) III iv 114–16, and makes him a belly-god in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (performed 1618, printed 1640).

  59.frolic of sportive in.

  60.Celtic, and Iberian French and Spanish.

  65. orient shining.

  66. drouth of Phoebus thirst caused by the hot sun.

  67. fond foolish.

  68–77. Soon as… sty Comus’s magic differs in many ways from that of Homer’s Circe. Comus uses his cup to transform people into any kind of animal; Circe uses her wand to turn men into pigs. Comus changes the head alone; Circe changes both head and body. Comus’s victims do not see their disfigurement; Circe’s want to be men again. Comus’s victims forget their native home; Circe’s forget ‘their own country’ while drinking, but Circe restores their minds when she transforms them (Od. x 236–40).

  69. Th‘express resemblance Cp. Heb. 1. 3; ‘the express image of his person’, and Gen. 1. 27.

  71. ounce lynx.

  73. perfect complete.

  misery despicable condition (OED5).

  74.*disfigurement.

  75.boast themselves more comely Plutarch has a dialogue in which Grillus, one of Odysseus’s men, would rather be a pig than a man (Moralia 985D–992E). Cp. Spenser, FQ II xii 86–7 and Browne, Inner Temple Masque 193–216.

  79. advent’rous perilous (OED2).

  83.Iris’ woof rainbow-coloured thread. Cp. PL xi 244.

  84.weeds clothes.

  swain shepherd, attendant (OED 4, 2).

  86–8. A compliment to Henry Lawes, who wrote the music for A Masque and played the part of the Attendant Spirit.

  88. nor of less faith and no less trustworthy (than talented).

  90. Likeliest best fitted (to give aid).

  present immediate.

  92. hateful steps] virgin steps TMS 1st reading. The cancelled version is presumably a slip made in anticipation of lines 145–50.

  viewless invisible.

  93. star… fold The evening star’s appearance was a signal for shepherds to pen their sheep. Cp. Virgil, Ecl. vi 85–6.

  95.gilded car of day the sun’s chariot.

  96.allay cool down.

  97.steep fast-flowing (OED 3e).

  Atlantic stream the river Ocean. See PL i 202n.

  98.slope setting. Cp. Lycidas 31.

  99.pole the sky (OED sb24).

  101. chamber Cp. Ps. 19. 4–5: ‘the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber’.

  105. rosy twine crown of roses. See above, 58n;.

  107. Rigour… bed Cp. Shakespeare, Falstaif: ‘What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?’ (Shakespeare, I Henry IV, II iv 284).

  110. saws maxims.

  111. purer fire the celestial fire of the stars. Comus claims to be of this fire, but he can only imitate it. Cp. Thomas Randolph, ‘Eclogue to Master Jonson’ (written c. 1632, printed 1638): ‘But we, whose souls are made of purer fire’ (98).

  112.choir *a band of dancers (OED 5a).

  113.watchful spheres Cp. Gen. I. 14:‘let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years’. Plato says that heavenly bodies were created to guard the numbers of time (Timaeus 38c). Comus also plays on watchful is ‘wakeful’.

  115.sounds straits.

  116.morris Puritans deplored morris dances, which the Stuart kings James I and Charles I defended in The Book of Sports (repr. 1633). M. celebrates such pastimes in L’Allegro, but is contemptuous of ‘morrice’ and ‘May pole’ in his political prose (YP 1. 931, 3, 358).

  117.shelves sandbanks.

  118. Trip dance.

  pert sprightly.

  dapper neat, trim.

  121. wakes nocturnal revels (OED 4c).

  123. sweets to prove pleasures to taste.

  129.Cotytto a Thracian earth-goddess worshipped with loud music and nocturnal torchlit orgies. Juvenal associates her rites with male transvestites (Satires II 9 if.).

  130.mysterious versed in occult arts (OED 2).

  131–5. dragon… Hecat’ Hecate rode a chariot drawn by dragons (Ovid, Met. vii 218–19). Here the dragon womb is darkness, which spits gloom from itself. Cp. Chaos as a ‘womb’ at PL ii 150, 911.

  132. Stygian hellish (from the black river Styx).

  134.chair chariot (OED ‘char’ 1).

  135.Hecat’ Hecate, goddess of witchcraft.

  138–41. blabbing… tell-tale sun Cp. Phineas Fletcher, Britain’s Ida (1628) ii 3, on day as a revealer of adultery: ‘The thick-locked boughs shut out the tell-tale sun, / (For Venus hated his all-blabbing light, / Since her known fault)’. Cp. also Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece 806: ‘the tell-tale Day’.

  138.scout a ‘sneak’ (OED 4a) and one sent ahead.

  139.nice shy (OED 5) and *morally strict (OED 7d).

  Indian steep the Himalayas. Cp. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream II i 69: ‘the furthest steep of India’.

  140. cabined loophole tiny window.

  141.descry reveal (OED 2). Cp. John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess (c.1609) III i 150–51: ‘lye by me, the sooner we begin, / The longer ere day descry our sin’.

  142. solemnity ceremony (OED 1).

  144. fantastic grotesque (OED 6).

  round ring-dance.

  [Stage direction] Measure dance (OED 20).

  antic grotesque gesture or posture (OED 2). The full, informative stage direction is from TMS and BMS (1637, 1645 and 1673 print only ‘The Measure’).

  145–6. different… footing Martz (24) hears ‘a metrical pun’ as Comus shifts from tetrameter couplets to blank verse.

  147. shrouds hiding-places.

  151. trains wiles (OED Ib) and bait to lure an animal into a trap (OED 3). Cp. course (159) Baited (161) and snares (164).

  154. dazzling spells Comus here threw sparkling powder into the air. TMS at first read ‘powdered spells’. Cp. ‘this magic dust’ (165).

  spongy absorbent.

  155.blear *dim, misty (OED 2). In earlier usage the word was applied only to eyes, not the object of vision.

  156.presentments appearances.

  157.quaint habits unfamiliar or foppish clothes.

  159.course including ‘hunt’ (OED 7).

  161.glozing flattering, deceiving.

  163.Wind me insinuate myself (suggesting a constrictor snake; notice hug, 164).

  *easy-hearted easily moved to trust.

  165.virtue power, efficacy.

  166. I shall appear some harmless villager Comus does not exit until line 329 and so cannot change costume. Magic alone causes the Lady to see a ‘shepherd’ (270). Contrast the Attendant Spirit, who enters habited like a shepherd (489).

  166–9. I… here In 1673 this passage reads: ‘I shall appear some harmless villager / And hearken, if I may, her business here, / But here she comes, I fairly step aside’. The list of errata emends ‘business here’ to ‘business hear’. Opinion is divided as to whether M., his editor, or a printer was responsible for the changes.

  167.gear doings, ‘goings on’ (OED 11b).

  168.fairly quietly, softly (OED 5).

  172. riot wanton revelry (OED 2).

  174.loose unlettered hinds lewd illiterate farmworkers. Cp. Marlowe, Hero and Leander (1598) ii 218: ‘vicious, harebrained, and illit ‘rate hinds’.

  175.teeming breeding.

  granges granaries.

  176. Pan the Greek god of shepherds, associated with sexual licence. But the Lady might mean God, whom the merrymakers praise
amiss. See Nativity 89n;.

  178.*swilled inebriated (OED’s sole instance).

  179.*wassailers revellers (OED), coined from the drinking salutation ‘wassail’ (OE was hal).

  180.inform *direct, guide (OED 4d).

  189. sad grave, serious (OED 4).

  votarist a person bound by a vow.

  in palmer’s meed dressed like a pilgrim.

  190. Phoebus’ wain the sun’s chariot.

  193.engaged exposed to risk (OED v 2).

  194.envious malicious (OED 2).

  195.Had stole] 1645, 1673; Had stol’n TMS, BMS, 1637.

  197. *dark lantern a lantern with a shutter by which the light can be concealed. Highwaymen used them (hence thievish and felonious). OED’s earliest instance is from 1650, but the Lady speaks as if dark lanterns were familiar objects.

  198–9. filled their lamps / With everlasting oil Cp. Fletcher, CV (1610) iii 36: ‘the pale starres… Quenched their everlasting lamps in night’.

  203.rife *loud-sounding (OED 4c).

  perfect heard distinctly.

  204.single absolute (OED 4).

  205–9. thousand… wildernesses M. recalls tales of spirits in the Gobi desert. Travellers who lag behind the caravan will hear familiar voices calling them by name, but if they follow the call they will perish (Marco Polo, Travels i 36). In John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess (c.1609), the virgin Clorin claims to be magically protected from ‘voices calling me in dead of night, / To make me followe, and so tole me on, / Through mires and standing pooles’ (I i 118–20). Cp. 432–7n and PL ix 631–42.

  205. fantasies hallucinations, phantoms (OED 3, 2).

  207.* calling… *beck’ning OED’s earliest participial instances.

  208.airy tongues Cp. Echo’s ‘airy tongue’ in Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet II ii 162. The Lady will soon invoke Echo (230f.).

  210. astound *amaze (OED 2), stupefy (OED 1).

  212. *siding taking the side of a person (OED 1, earliest participial instance).

  214.hovering] flittering TMS 1st reading (retained in 1637).

  215.Chastity The Lady substitutes chastity for charity, which traditionally follows Faith and Hope (I Cor. 13. 13).