by John Milton
Th’ express resemblance of the gods, is chang’d
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Into som brutish form of wolf or bear
Or Ounce,11 or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
All other parts remaining as they were,
And they, so perfect is thir misery,
Not once perceave thir foul disfigurement,
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But boast themselves more comely then before
And all thir freinds and native home forget
To roul with pleasure in a sensual stie.
Therfore when any favour’d of high Jove
Chances to pass through this adventrous glade,
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Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star
I shoot from Heav’n to give him safe convoy
As now I do: but first I must put off
These my sky robes spun out of Iris woof12
And take the weeds and likenes of a swain
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That to the service of this house belongs,
Who with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song
Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,13
And hush the waving woods, nor of less faith,
And in this office of his mountain watch,
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Likeliest and neerest to the present aid
Of this occasion, but I hear the tread
Of hatefull steps, I must be veiwles now.
Comus enters with a charming rod in one hand, his glass in the other, with him a rout of monsters headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparell glistring; they com in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands.
Comus. The star that bids the shepherd fold,14
Now the top of Heav’n doth hold,
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And the gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay15
In the steep Atlantick stream,
And the slope sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
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Pacing toward the other goal
Of his chamber in the East.
Mean while welcom Joy and feast,
Midnight shout, and revelry,
Tipsie dance, and jollity.
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Braid your locks with rosie twine
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigor now is gon to bed,
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict age, and sowr severity
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With thir grave saws in slumber lie.
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the starry quire,10
Who in thir nightly watchfull sphears
Lead in swift round the months and years.
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The sounds and seas with all thir finny drove
Now to the moon in wavering morrice17 move,
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies, and the dapper elves.
By dimpled brook and fountain brim,
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The wood nymphs deckt with daysies trim
Thir merry wakes18 and pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night has better sweets to prove,
Venus now wakes, and wak’ns Love.
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Com let us our rights begin,
’Tis only daylight that makes sin
Which these dun shades will ne’re report.
Hail goddess of nocturnal sport,
Dark-vaild Cotytto,19 t’ whom the secret flame
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Of midnight torches burns; mysterious Dame
That ne’re art call’d, but when the dragon womb
Of Stygian darknes spitts her thickest gloom
And makes one blot of all the air,
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
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Wherin thou rid’st with Hecat’,20 and befreind
Us thy vow’d preists till utmost end
Of all thy dues be don and none left out,
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice morn on th’ Indian steep
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From her cabin’d loop hole peep,
And to the tell-tale sun discry
Our conceal’d solemnity.
Com, knit hands, and beat the ground,
In a light fantastick round.
The Measure.
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Break off, break off, I feel the different pace
Of som chast footing neer about this ground,
Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees,
Our number may affright. Som virgin sure
(For so I can distinguish by mine art)
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Benighted in these woods. Now to my charms,
And to my wily trains;21 I shall e’re long
Be well stock’t with as fair a herd as graz’d
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
My dazling spells into the spungy air,
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Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion
And give it false presentments, lest the place
And my quaint habits breed astonishment
And put the damsel to suspicious flight,
Which must not be, for that’s against my course;
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I under fair pretence of freindly ends
And well-plac’t words of glozing22 courtesie
Baited with reasons not unplausible
Wind me into the easie-hearted man,
And hugg him into snares. When once her eye
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Hath met the vertue of this magick dust,
I shall appear som harmles villager
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear,
But heer she comes, I fairly step aside
And hearken, if I may, her buisness heer.
The Lady enters.
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Lady. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
My best guide now; me thought it was the sound
Of riot and ill-manag’d merriment,
Such as the jocond flute or gamesom pipe
Stirrs up amongst the loose unletter’d hinds,
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When for thir teeming flocks, and granges full
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan23
And thank the gods amiss. I should be loath
To meet the rudeness and swill’d insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet O where els
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Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
In the blind maze of this tangl’d Wood?
My brothers when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving heer to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,
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Stept, as they sed, to the next thicket side
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left me then, when the gray-hooded Eev’n
Like a sad votarist in palmers weeds24
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Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phœbus wain.
But where they are and why they came not back
Is now the labour of my thoughts; ‘tis likeliest
They had ingag’d thir wandring steps too far,
And envious darknes, e’re they could return,
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Had stoln them from me; els O theevish night
Why shouldst thou, but for som fellonious end,
In thy dark lantern25 thus close up the stars
That nature hung in Heav’n, and fill’d thir lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light
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To the misled and lonely travailer?
This is the place, as well as I may guess,
Whence eev’n now the tumult of loud mirth
Was rife and perfet in my list’ning ear,
Ye
t nought but single darknes do I find.
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What might this be? A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory
Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire,
And airy tongues, that syllable mens names
On sands, and shoars, and desert wildernesses.
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These thoughts may startle well, but not astound
The vertuous mind, that ever walks attended
By a strong siding champion conscience—
O welcom pure-ey’d Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou flittering Angel girt with golden wings,
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And thou unblemish’t form of Chastity,
I see ye visibly, and now beleeve
That he, the supreme good, t’ whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistring guardian if need were
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To keep my life and honour unassail’d.
Was I deceav’d, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err, there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night
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And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
I cannot hallow to my brothers, but
Such noise as I can make to be heard fardest
Ile venter, for my new-enliv’n’d spirits
Prompt me; and they perhaps are not far off.
SONG
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Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv’st unseen
Within thy airy cell
By slow Mæander’s26 margent green,
And in the violet-imbroider’d vale
Where the love-lorn nightingale
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Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are?27
O if thou have
Hid them in som flowry Cave,
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Tell me but where
Sweet Queen of Parly, Daughter of the Sphear,
So maist thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all Heav’ns harmonies.
Comus. Can any mortal mixture of Earths mould
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Breath such divine inchanting ravishment?
Sure somthing holy lodges in that brest,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testifie his hidd’n residence;
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
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Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall28 smoothing the raven down
Of darknes till she smil’d: I have oft heard
My Mother Circe with the Sirens three,
Amidst the flowry-kirtl’d Naiades
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Culling thir potent hearbs, and balefull drugs,
Who as they sung, would take the prison’d soul,
And lap it in Elysium; Scylla29 wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmur’d soft applause:
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Yet they in pleasing slumber lull’d the sense,
And in sweet madnes rob’d it of it self,
But such a sacred, and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss
I never heard till now. Ile speak to her
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And she shall be my Queen. Hail forren wonder
Whom certain these rough shades did never breed
Unless the Goddes that in rurall shrine
Dwell’st heer with Pan or Silvan, by blest song
Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog
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To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood.
Lady. Nay gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is addrest to unattending ears,
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my sever’d company
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Compell’d me to awake the courteous Echo
To give me answer from her mossie couch.
Comus. What chance good Lady, hath bereft you thus?
Lady. Dim darknes, and this leavy Labyrinth.
Comus. Could that divide you from neer-ushering guides?
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Lady. They left me weary on a grassie terf.
Comus. By falshood, or discourtesie or why?
Lady. To seek i’th valley som cool freindly spring.
Comus. And left your fair side all unguarded Lady?
Lady. They were but twain, and purpos’d quick return.
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Comus. Perhaps fore-stalling night prevented them.
Lady. How easie my misfortune is to hit!
Comus. Imports thir loss, beside the present need?
Lady. No less then if I should my brothers loose.
Comus. Were they of manly prime, or youthfull bloom?
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Lady. As smooth as Hebe’s thir unrazor’d lips.
Comus. Two such I saw, what time the labour’d ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swink’t30 hedger at his supper sate;
I saw ‘em under a green mantling vine
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That crawls along the side of yon small hill,
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots,
Thir port was more then human, as they stood;
I took it for a faery vision
Of som gay creatures of the element
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That in the colours of the rainbow live
And play i’th plighted31 clouds. I was aw-strook,
And as I past, I worshipt; if those you seek
It were a journey like the path to Heav’n,
To help you find them.
Lady. Gentle villager
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What readiest way would bring me to that place?
Comus. Due west it rises from this shrubby point.
Lady. To find out that, good shepherd, I suppose,
In such a scant allowance of star-light,
Would overtask the best land-pilots art,
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Without the sure guess of well-practiz’d feet.
Comus. I know each lane, and every alley green
Dingle, or bushy dell of this wide wood,
And every bosky bourn32 from side to side
My dayly walks and ancient neighbourhood,
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And if your stray attendance be yet lodg’d,
Or shroud within these limits, I shall know
Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark
From her thach’t pallat rowse, if otherwise
I can conduct you Lady, to a low
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But loyal cottage, where you may be safe
Till furder quest.
Lady. Shepherd I take thy word,
And trust thy honest offer’d courtesie,
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds
With smoaky rafters, then in tapstry halls
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And courts of princes, where it first was nam’d,
And yet is most pretended: In a place
Less warranted then this, or less secure
I cannot be, that I should fear to change it;
Eye me blest providence, and square my triall
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To my proportion’d strength. Shepherd lead on.—
The two Brothers.
Elder Brother. Unmuffle ye faint stars, and thou fair moon
That wontst to love the travailers benizon,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit Chaos, that raigns heer
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In double night of darknes, and of shades;
Or if your influence be quite damm’d up
With black usurping mists, som gentle taper
Though a rush33 candle from the wicker hole
Of som clay habitation visit us
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With thy long levell’d rule of streaming light,
And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,
Or Tyrian Cynosure.34
2 Brother. Or if our eyes
Be barr’d that happines, might we but hear
The folded flocks pen’d in thir watled cotes,
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Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops,
Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock
Count the night watches to his feathery Dames,
’Twould be som solace yet, som little chearing
In this close dungeon of innumerous bows.
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But O that haples virgin our lost sister,
Where may she wander now, whether betake her
From the chill dew, amongst rude burrs and thistles?
Perhaps som cold bank is her boulster now
Or ‘gainst the rugged bark of som broad Elm
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Leans her unpillow’d head fraught with sad fears.
What if in wild amazement, and affright,
Or while we speak within the direfull grasp
Of Savage hunger, or of Savage heat?
Elder Brother. Peace brother, be not over-exquisite35
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To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;
For grant they be so, while they rest unknown,
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid?
Or if they be but false alarms of Fear,
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How bitter is such self-delusion?
I do not think my sister so to seek,
Or so unprincipl’d in vertues book,
And the sweet peace that goodnes bosoms ever,
As that the single want of light and noise
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(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not)
Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts,
And put them into misbecomming plight.
Vertue could see to do what vertue would