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diff --git a/31706-8.txt b/31706-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3d3db94 --- /dev/null +++ b/31706-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6170 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Minor Poems by Milton, by John Milton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Minor Poems by Milton + +Author: John Milton + +Editor: Samuel Thurber + +Release Date: March 20, 2010 [EBook #31706] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MINOR POEMS BY MILTON *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Stephen Hutcheson and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + The Academy Series of English Classics + + + + + _MILTON_ + MINOR POEMS + + + L'Allegro Il Penseroso Comus + Arcades On the Nativity Lycidas + On Shakespeare At a Solemn Music Sonnets + + + WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES + BY + SAMUEL THURBER + + ALLYN AND BACON + _Boston and Chicago_ + + COPYRIGHT, 1901, + BY SAMUEL THURBER. + + _Norwood Press_ + J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith + Norwood Mass. U.S.A. + + + + + CONTENTS. + + + Preface + Outlines of the Life of Milton + TEXT: + On the Morning of Christ's Nativity + On Shakespeare + L'Allegro + Il Penseroso + Arcades + At a Solemn Music + Comus + Lycidas + Sonnets: + I. To the Nightingale + II. On his having arrived at the Age of Twenty-three 68 + VIII. When the Assault was intended to the City 69 + IX. To a Virtuous Young Lady 70 + X. To the Lady Margaret Ley 70 + XIII. To Mr. H. Lawes on his Airs 71 + XV. On the Lord General Fairfax, at the Siege of Colchester 72 + XVI. To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652 72 + XVII. To Sir Henry Vane the Younger 73 + XVIII. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont 74 + XIX. On his Blindness 74 + XX. To Mr. Lawrence 75 + XXI. To Cyriack Skinner 76 + XXII. To the Same 76 + XXIII. On his Deceased Wife 77 + Notes 79 + + + + + PREFACE. + + +The purpose held in view by those who place the study of Milton in high +school English courses is twofold: first, that youth may seasonably +become acquainted with a portion of our great classic poetry; and, +secondly, that they may in this poetry encounter and learn to conquer +difficulties more serious than those they have met in the literature they +have hitherto read. It is for the teacher to see to it that both these +aims are attained. The pupil must read with interest, and he must expect +at the same time to have to do some strenuous thinking and not to object +to turning over many books. + +The average pupil will not at first read anything of Milton with perfect +enjoyment. He will, with his wonted docility, commit passages to memory, +and he will do his best to speak these passages with the elocution on +which you insist. But the taste for this poetry is an acquired one, and +in the acquisition usually costs efforts quite alien to the prevailing +conceptions of reading as a pleasurable recreation. + +The task of pedagogy at this point becomes delicate. First of all, the +teacher must recognize the fact that his class will not, however good +their intentions, leap to a liking for Comus or Lycidas or even for the +Nativity Ode. It is of no use to assign stanzas or lines as lessons and +to expect these to be studied to a conclusion like a task of French +translation. The only way not to be disappointed in the performance of +the class is to expect nothing. It will be well at first, except where +the test is quite simple, for the teacher to read it himself, making +comment, in the way of explanation, as he goes on. Now and then he will +stop and have a little quiz to hold attention. When classical allusions +come up requiring research, the teacher will tell in what books the +matter may be looked up, and will show how other poets, or Milton +elsewhere, have played with the same piece of history or mythology. Thus +a poem may be dealt with for a number of days. Repetition is, to a +certain extent, excellent. The verses begin to sink into the young minds; +the measure appeals to the inborn sense of rhythm; the poem is caught by +the ear like a piece of music; the utterance of it becomes more like +singing than speaking. In fact, the great secret of teaching poetry in +school is to get rid of the commonplace manner of speech befitting a +recitation in language or science, and to put in practice the obvious +truth that verse has its own form, which is very different from the form +of prose. But repetition may go too far. Over-familiarity may beget +indifference. Other poems await the attention of the class. + +The teacher who really means to interest his classes, and begins by being +interested and interesting himself, will rarely fail to accomplish his +purpose. The principal obstacle to success here is the necessity, that +frequently exists, of conforming to the custom of examining, marking, and +ranking--a practice that thwarts genuine personal influence, formalizes +all procedures, and tends to deaden natural interest by substituting for +it the artificial interest of school standing. The Milton lesson must be +a serious one because it is given to the study of the serious work of the +gravest and most high-minded of men; and it must be an enjoyable one +because it deals with the verse of the most musical of poets, and because +one mood of joy is the only mood in which literature can be profitably +studied. + +As to the difficulties which the learner first encounters when he comes +to Milton, these grow sometimes out of the diction, sometimes out of the +syntax, and sometimes out of the poet's figures and allusions. Some +difficulties can be explained at once and completely. Others cannot be +explained at all with any reasonable hope of touching the beginner's mind +with matter that he can appropriate. Often the young reader slips over +points of possible learned annotation without the least consciousness +that here great scholarship might make an imposing display. Perfectly +useless is it to set forth for the pupil the interesting echoes from +ancient poets which generations of delving scholars have accumulated in +their notes to Milton, pleasing as these are to mature readers. + +The rule should be to expound and illustrate sufficiently to remove those +perplexities which really tease the pupil's mind and cause him to feel +dissatisfaction with himself. In many cases our only course is to +postpone exposition and to trust that the learner will grow up to the +insight which he as yet does not possess and which we cannot possibly +give him. A learned writer, like Milton, who has read all antiquity, and +who has no purpose of writing for children, inevitably contemplates a +public of men approximately his equals in culture, and expects to find +"fit audience, though few." + +But many of the difficulties that confront the beginner in Milton ask +only to be explained at once by some one who has had more experience in +the older literature. Archaic forms of words and expressions, with which +the ripe student is familiar, worry the tyro, and must be accounted for. +Often the common dictionaries will give all needed help; but the best +means of acquiring speedy familiarity with obsolete and rare forms is a +Milton concordance--such as that of Bradshaw--in connection with the +Century Dictionary, or with the Oxford Dictionary, so far as this goes. +These means of easy research should be at hand. I find that pupils often +need a pretty sharp spur to make them use even their abridged +dictionaries. But so far as concerns acquaintance with the vocabulary of +poetic diction, nothing will do except the dictionary habit, accompanied +by an effort of the memory to retain what has been learned. + +Difficulties that lurk in an involved syntax the pupil may usually be +expected to solve by study. But such a peculiar construction as that in +Sonnet X 9 will probably have to be explained to him. + +In the puritan theology and its implications he cannot take much +interest, and will of course not be asked to do so. But high school +students of Milton will ordinarily, in their historical courses, have +come down to the times in which the poet lived, will understand his +relation to public events, and will appreciate his feeling toward the +English ecclesiastical system. Puritanism, a phenomenon of the most +tremendous importance at a certain period of English history, has so +completely disappeared from the modern world, that the utterances of a +seventeenth-century poet, professedly a partisan, on matters of church +and state, no longer exasperate, and can barely even interest, students +of literature. + +To read either Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy we must find the poet's +cosmical and his theological standpoint. We have no right to be surprised +or shocked at his conceptions. We must take him as he is, and let him +lead us through the universe as he has planned it. So long as we set up +our modern views as a standard, and by this standard judge the ancient +men, we fail in hospitality of thought, and come short of our duty as +readers. + +This consideration suggests yet another purpose in setting youth to the +reading of Milton. By no means an ancient poet, he takes us, +nevertheless, to a world different from our own, and in some sense helps +us out of the modern time in which our lives have fallen, to show us how +other ages conceived of God and Heaven. The mark of an educated man is +respect for the past; the old philosophies and religions do not startle +and repel him; his ancestors were once in those stages of belief; in some +stage of this vast movement of thought he and his fellows are at the +present moment. This largeness of view can be fruitfully impressed on +youth only by letting them read, under wise guidance, the older poets. + + + + + OUTLINES OF THE LIFE OF MILTON. + + +John Milton was born in London on the ninth of December, 1608. Queen +Elizabeth had then been dead five years, and the literature which we call +Elizabethan was still being written by the men who had begun their +careers under her reign. Spenser had died in 1599. The theatres were yet +in the enjoyment of full popularity, and the play-writers were producing +works that continued the traditions and the manner of the Elizabethan +drama. Shakespeare had still eight years to live, and at least four of +the great plays to write. Bacon's fame was already great, but the events +of eighteen years were to cloud his reputation and establish his renown. +Jonson, great as a writer of masks, was to live till he might have seen, +in Comus, how a young and scholarly puritan humanist thought that a mask +should be conceived. + +Born thus in the fifth year of the first of the Stuarts, Milton lived to +witness all the vicissitudes of English politics in which that family was +involved, except the very last. He did not see the Revolution of 1688. +Surviving for fourteen years the restoration of Charles II., he died in +1674, at the age of sixty-six. + +Milton's social position can be inferred from the fact that his father +was what was then called a scrivener,--that is, he kept an office in his +dwelling, and was employed to draw up contracts, wills, and other legal +documents. This occupation implied knowledge at least of the forms of the +law, though not of its history or principles. It did not imply liberal +education, though it brought its practitioner, doubtless, more or less +into contact with men of really professional standing in the science of +jurisprudence. Perhaps the elder Milton cherished a deeper conviction of +the value of classic culture than do those who simply inherit, and take +as a matter of course, the custom of devoting years to the study of +ancient languages and literatures. + +Evidently the father thought he saw in his son that promise of +intellectual vigor and of sound moral stamina which justified the +innovation, in his family, of sending his boy to the university. His +preparation for college Milton got under private masters and at the +famous public school of St. Paul's, which was near his home. This +preparation consisted chiefly in exercises in Latin composition and +literature, and was both thorough and effectual. At sixteen, when he went +to college, he had already composed Latin verse, and he read and wrote +Latin with facility. + +In 1625 Milton entered Christ's College, Cambridge. Here he remained as a +student seven years, or till 1632, taking in course his A.B. and A.M. +degrees, and, in spite of his studious habits and his aversion to the +rough and wayward customs of student life, winning more and more, and at +last having in full measure, the respect of his fellow-collegians. During +these years he wrote, but did not publish, in Latin or English, no less +than twenty-five pieces of verse, among them poems of no less note than +the Nativity Ode, and the Sonnet on arriving at the age of twenty-three. +The lines on Shakespeare were also composed in this period, and appeared +in print among the poems prefixed to the second Shakespeare folio in +1632. + +Returning, at the close of his university course, to the paternal +residence, the poet came, not to London, but to the village of Horton, in +Buckinghamshire, where his father had taken a house in order to live in +the country. Now had to be debated the question of a profession. Hitherto +the son had seemed silently to acquiesce in the understood hope of the +family that he would devote himself to a career in the church. But during +his university years of study and observation his views had become fixed, +his mind had advanced to self-determination, and he could not remain +content with a future that seemed to hamper his intellectual freedom. +This difference between father and son was settled, apparently without +strife, by the elder man's entire yielding to the desires of the younger. +The son could not, as we can well understand if we have read even only a +little of his verse or his prose, be otherwise than strenuous, insistent, +and masterful. To his father he was of course filial and respectful, we +may imagine him even gentle; but conciliatory, yielding, the point being +a vital one, it was not in his nature to be. + +What the young Milton desired was to lead a life devoted to literature, +or, more specifically, to poetry. This meant that he wished still to +study a long time, to fathom all learning in all tongues. In college he +had, besides Latin, mastered Greek, French, Italian, and Hebrew. His +conception of a poet was of a most profoundly learned man. He had become +aware of the existence of vast areas of knowledge that he had not yet +explored. Other young men turned aside without misgiving from the +ambition to know everything, and eagerly entered into useful and +lucrative professions. But Milton scorns the thought of applying learning +to the service of material gain. This is his poetical conception of his +duty as a scholar. It will dominate the spirit of his life work. To +understand his feelings at this time both toward his father and toward +his ideals, we must read the Latin poem _Ad Patrem_, of which Professor +Masson gives an English translation. + +At Horton, therefore, Milton remains, still subsisting on his father's +bounty. Having come back thither at the age of twenty-three, he continues +to live at home for nearly six years, not yet practising any art by which +to earn a livelihood. Occasionally he goes, on scholarly errands, to +London, which is not far distant. He devotes himself simply to study, and +having the poetic temperament, he cannot help devoting himself also to +observation of nature. His learning becomes immense; his appetite is +insatiable. + +To the Horton time belong the "minor poems" not already produced during +the student years at Cambridge. Of the circumstances in which the several +poems were written, an account is given in the Notes in this volume. This +early, or minor, verse of Milton is elicited by passing events, and is +considered to concern only himself and a few friends. For immediate fame +he takes no thought. He feels his immaturity. His ambition contemplates a +distant future, and he meditates plans, as yet undefined and vague, of +some great work that the world shall not willingly let die. + +Very important in Milton's intellectual development is his journey to +France and Italy, on which he set out in April, 1638. As an indication of +his social position in England, we must note that he carries with him +letters of introduction which secure to him notice and recognition from +men of rank or of notable literary and scientific standing. He goes +abroad as a cultivated private gentleman, known to have achieved +distinction as a student. Undoubtedly his chief qualification for holding +his own in learned Italian society was his command of languages, +especially of Latin, unless indeed we are to put before his linguistic +accomplishments the refined and gentlemanly personal bearing which was +his birthright, and which, in his years of intense application to books, +he had not forfeited. In Italy he associated with men whose intellectual +interests were the universal ones of science, in which he was as much at +home as they. Thus he possessed a perfect outfit of the endowments and +the acquisitions which a traveller needs to make his travel fruitful to +himself and honorable to his country. + +In Italy he made friends among men of note, and established relations +which were to have their importance in his future life. But most +memorable among his Italian experiences was his visit to the aged +Galileo, who was then a "prisoner to the Inquisition" for teaching that +the earth moves round the sun. The modern astronomy was then winning its +way among men of thought very much as the doctrine of evolution has been +winning its way during the last half century. Few minds surrendered +instantly and without misgiving to the new conception. Milton has still +many years to meditate the question before he comes to the composition of +Paradise Lost, when his scheme of the physical universe will have to +recognize the requirements of poetic art and the prevalence of ancient +beliefs regarding the origin and order of the cosmos. From the fact that +the poet puts the earth in the centre of the universe, that he adopts, in +fact, the Ptolemaic system, though he knew the Copernican, we are not +entitled to infer that he held a fixed conviction in the matter, and +that, on direct examination as to his views, he would have absolutely +professed one theory and rejected the other. The poet has all rights of +choice, and may be said to know best where to stand to take his view of +the world. + +Milton remained abroad some sixteen months, and was home again in August, +1639. The Horton household was now broken up, the father going to live, +first with his younger son, Christopher, at Reading, and afterward to +spend his last years in the family of John in London, where he died in +1647. + +With his removal to London in 1639 a distinct period in Milton's life +comes to an end. He has hitherto been uninterruptedly acquiring knowledge +both by studious devotion to books and by observation of human life in +foreign lands. He has read all the great literatures in ancient and +modern languages. He has felt the poetic impulse and has proved to +himself that he has at command creative power. His purpose still is to +produce a poem. But this poem of his aspirations is distinctly a great +and majestic affair, and not at all a continuation of such work as that +which he has hitherto given to his friends, and which he esteems as +prolusions of his youth. + +The poetic waiting-time which Milton, now in full vigor of manhood, +prescribes for himself, he is constrained, both by inner conviction and +by external necessity, to fill with hard and earnest work. Henceforth, +for a score of years, he ceases almost entirely to write verse, and he +earns his living. He becomes a householder in London, where, as the +father had gained his livelihood by drawing up contracts and mortgages +for his fellow-citizens, the son proceeds to gain his by teaching their +boys Latin. + +To the work of teaching, Milton addressed himself with intelligence and +predilection. About education he had ideas of his own which he applied in +practice and advocated in writing. His Tract on Education is a document +of importance in the history of pedagogy, and is, besides, one of those +memorable pieces of English prose which every student of literature, +whatever his professional aims, must include in his reading. He kept his +school in his own house, where he boarded some of his pupils. We could +not imagine John Milton going into a great public school, like St. +Paul's, to serve as under-teacher to one of the tyrannical head-masters +of the day. The only school befitting his absolutely convinced and +masterful spirit is one in which he reigns supreme. The great subject is +Latin, and so thoroughly is Latin taught that finally other subjects are +explained through the medium of this language. He had, himself, brought +from his school and college days very decided discontent with the methods +then in vogue. This discontent he expresses in language of peculiar +energy and even harshness. He is a true reformer. + +In 1643 Milton, then thirty-five years old, married Mary Powell, a girl +of just half his own age, daughter of a royalist residing near Oxford. We +must imagine this young wife as coming to preside, somewhat in the +capacity of matron, over a family of boys held severely to their tasks of +study by a master in whom the sense of humor was almost entirely lacking, +and whose discipline was of the sternest. That she could not endure the +situation was but natural. Very soon after the wedding she went home with +the understanding that she was to make a short visit to her parents and +sisters; but she did not return for two years. Her husband summoned her, +but she would not come back. In 1645 she at last repented of her +waywardness, sought reconciliation, and was forgiven. These two years had +wrought a change in Mary Powell Milton. She was now ready to live with +her husband, and did so till her death in 1652. She left him three +daughters, the youngest of whom, Deborah, lived till 1723, and was known +to Addison and his contemporaries, from whom she received distinguished +honors. + +In reading Milton we find that all the vicissitudes of his life reflect +themselves in his works, so that the political and social events in which +he is personally concerned usurp his attention, color his views, and +often become his themes. Thus he is not, like Shakespeare, a critic of +the whole of humanity, but is usually an advocate or an accuser of the +leaders in church and state and of the principles which they profess. He +is by nature a partisan. All the energy of his mind goes into +denunciation or vindication. His experience of wedded life made him an +advocate of easier divorce, and determined in him a mood which expressed +itself in writings that naturally brought upon him obloquy even from +those who held him most in honor. + +It would be most interesting to know something of the daily routine of +Milton's school, to ascertain what his pupils knew and could do when he +had done with them. But we must remember that during all the years of his +teaching the great Revolution was in progress, that all men of thought +were profoundly stirred on public questions, and that Milton himself was +a politician and an eager partisan of the cause of Parliament. He did not +consider himself a teacher finally and for good. His school did not +develop into anything great or conspicuous, and never became an object of +curiosity. While yet engaged in such teaching as he found to do, he had +written the pamphlets on education and on divorce, and also the famous +one entitled Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed +Printing to the Parliament of England. This is the best worth reading of +all his prose writings. The subject of it is perfectly intelligible +still, and its English shows to perfection the qualities of the great +Miltonic style. + +After the execution of Charles I., Jan. 30, 1649, it became more than +ever necessary for all thoughtful men to express their convictions. For a +people to put to death its king by judicial process was an unheard of +event. Those who considered that the Parliament had acted within the law +and could not have done otherwise with due regard to the welfare of the +nation had to convince doubting and timid citizens at home, and also, so +far as was possible, to placate critics in other nations who still +believed that the king could do no wrong; for all Europe interested +itself in this tremendous act of the English Parliament. + +Within a fortnight after the death of the king, Milton published his +pamphlet on The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. This work so impressed +the parliamentary leaders as a thorough and unanswerable argument in +defence of their cause that they sought out its author, and in March +appointed him to the important post of Secretary for Foreign Tongues. +Milton's perfect command of Latin now stood him in good stead. Here was +an uncompromising puritan, fully the equal of the foreign ecclesiastics +in theology, and capable of holding his own in Latin composition with the +most famous humanists of the time. Latin was then the language of +international intercourse. Milton's duty was to translate into and from +Latin the despatches that passed between his own and foreign governments. +He also composed original treatises, some in English and some in Latin, +the most important of which continued his justification of the national +act of regicide. The importance of these writings was very great. +Milton's services to the puritan cause can to-day hardly be appreciated. +It was the constant aim of royalists at home and abroad to represent +England as having fallen under the control of ignorant fanatics, of +ambitious, barbarous, blood-thirsty men. By his very personality, his +knowledge of affairs, his familiarity with ancient and mediæval history, +and, above all, by his fluency in Latin invective, Milton thwarted +attempts to disparage his countrymen as lawless barbarians. He helped to +maintain the good name of his country as a land of intellectual light and +of respect for ancient usage. Foreigners who attempted personal +vilification found him ready to meet them with their own weapons. The +poet of Comus now shows himself a controversialist of unbounded energy. + +In 1652, shortly before the death of his wife, Milton became totally +blind. Henceforward the duties of his secretaryship had to be performed +with the aid of an amanuensis. He continued, however, to fill the office +till just before the end of the Protectorate in 1659. In November, 1656, +he married Katharine Woodcocke, who lived but till March, 1658. She left +an infant which died a month after the mother. + +Milton's duties as Secretary for Foreign Tongues must have brought him, +one would think, into some sort of personal relation with Cromwell and +the other great parliamentary leaders. The poet leaves us in no doubt as +to the high esteem in which he held these men. But no gossip of the time +admits us to a glimpse of their intercourse with each other. It falls to +Milton to eulogize Cromwell; it never came in Cromwell's way to put on +record his estimate of Milton. + +With the restoration of royalty in the person of Charles II., in 1660, +Milton's public activity of course ceased, and the second period of his +life comes to an end. We saw his first period devoted to preparation and +to early essays in poetry, with the distinct conception that poetry was +yet to be the great work of his life. In his second period he expresses +himself in verse but rarely and briefly, but produces controversial +prose, now in English, now in Latin. In this second period he works, as +teacher or as public secretary, for payment, supporting himself and +family. When the third period begins, he loses all employment, goes into +closest retirement, a widower with three daughters growing up from +childhood, and devotes himself to the poetry that he has always +contemplated as the object of his ambition. He has now been blind eight +years. + +In view of the conspicuous part that Milton had taken in defending the +right of Parliament to bring a king to the scaffold, it is surprising +that of the Restoration he was not included in the number of those marked +out for the punishment of death. He was for some time undoubtedly in +danger. Fortunately he was overlooked, or, perhaps, was purposely +neglected as being henceforce harmless. + +In February, 1663, he married his third wife Elizabeth Minshull, who +faithfully cared for him till his death in 1674. + +During this last period of his life Milton composed and published his +_major_ poems,--Paradise Lost, 1667, Paradise Regained, and Samson +Agonistes, 1671. For Paradise Lost he received from his publisher five +pounds in cash, with promise of five pounds when thirteen hundred copies +should have been sold, and of two more payments, each of the same sum, +when two more editions of the same size should have been disposed of. + +The last years of his life Milton appears to have spent in comparative +comfort. His three daughters had gone out to learn trades. It seems he +had given them no education. It may be they showed no desire or aptitude +for instruction. Far more probably, however, he took no interest in their +education. His ideal of womanhood, as may be gathered from numerous +passages in his poems, is as far as possible removed from the modern +conception of sexual equality as to opportunity for education and for +training to self-determination. He shared in this respect the views that +prevailed during his day in all classes of society, and he maintained +these views as a parent no less than as the poet of Paradise. + +Besides the poems named above as produced during this last period of his +life, Milton published also in these years several prose works, which +have now little value except as showing the bent and occupation of his +mind. Among these may be named a small Latin Grammar, written in English, +which he had composed long before, and a History of Britain to the Norman +Conquest. + +Though the immediate sale of Paradise Lost was not large, according to +our ideas, it was yet sufficient to indicate a very respectable interest +in the reading public of the day. We must remember that it appeared in +the corrupt time of the Restoration, when the prevailing literary fashion +was wholly adverse to seriousness and ideality. The age was spiritually +degenerate. Milton himself considered that he lived "an age too late." +The great poem had no royal or noble sponsors to give it vogue; yet it +made its way. By no means had all minds become frivolous. The minor poems +had been published by themselves in 1645. These had always had their +readers. The prose pamphlets of the secretary for foreign tongues were, +at least by a small class of observant persons, known to be the work of +the author of Comus and Lycidas. There were not wanting men to take a +sympathetic interest in the fate of the poet in his retirement, and to +note the appearance of Paradise Lost as a literary event. + +Thus it was that Milton lived to have some slight foretaste of the honor +which two centuries have bestowed on his memory. Visitors came to see him +in his modest dwelling in an unfashionable quarter of London. Foreigners +occasionally came to satisfy their curiosity. Dryden, the chief poet who +wrote in the spirit of the Restoration, called to talk with the author of +Paradise Lost, and to suggest improvements in the form of the poem, which +he thought should be in rhyme. The recognition which the poet thus got in +his lifetime is small only in comparison with the immense fame he has won +since his death. + +Milton has now become an object of the profoundest curiosity. His life +has been investigated by Professor Masson, with a minute scrutiny into +detail such as has been devoted to no other writer but Shakespeare. His +works are perpetually reprinted in all imaginable forms, whether of +cheapness or of sumptuous elegance. They are read as text-books in +schools by hosts of youth. Our beliefs regarding the great themes of the +sacred scriptures are so colored by the Miltonic epics that we hardly +know to-day just what part of our conceptions we owe to the Bible and +what to the poet. Next to the Shakespearean dramas, the poems of Milton +are the largest single influence that knits the English-speaking race +into one vast brotherhood. + +All students of Milton have to acknowledge their indebtedness to +Professor David Masson of Edinburgh, who has devoted years of labor to +research in every department of Miltonic lore. Masson's great Life of +Milton in Connexion with the History of his Time is far too bulky for use +except for reference on special points. The index volume makes the +enormous Work accessible as occasion requires. + +To his edition of the poetical works, Masson prefixes a life, which will +suffice for all the needs likely to arise in school. Yet again, Masson is +the writer of the article on Milton in the Encyclopædia Britannica, a +most complete presentment of everything a student ordinarily needs to +know. + +In the series of Classical Writers is a little book, or primer, on +Milton, written by Stopford A. Brooke. + +In the English Men of Letters series, the Milton is the work of Mark +Pattison. + +The latest good account of Milton is the book entitled simply John +Milton, by Walter Raleigh, professor at University College, Liverpool. +This is a remarkably vigorous and illuminating piece of criticism. + +Perhaps the most interesting writing on a Milton subject is the book by +Mrs. Anne Manning, The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell (afterward +Mrs. Milton), and the sequel thereto, Deborah's Diary. This the student +must read with the full understanding that it is a work of fiction. + +It is right to warn young readers against the natural tendency to give +their time to critical and expository books and articles before they make +acquaintance with originals. Almost every essayist of note has written on +Milton. There is danger lest we accept opinions at second hand. The only +opinions on Milton to which we have any right are those we form from our +own reading of his works. + + + + + MILTON'S MINOR POEMS. + + + + + ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. + + + [Composed 1629.] + + + I. + + This is the month, and this the happy morn, + Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King, + Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, + Our great redemption from above did bring; + For so the holy sages once did sing, 5 + That he our deadly forfeit should release, + And with his Father work us a perpetual peace. + + + II. + + That glorious form, that light unsufferable, + And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, + Wherewith he wont at Heaven's high council-table 10 + To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, + He laid aside, and, here with us to be, + Forsook the courts of everlasting day, + And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. + + + III. + + Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein 15 + Afford a present to the Infant God? + Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, + To welcome him to this his new abode, + Now while the heaven, by the Sun's team untrod, + Hath took no print of the approaching light, 20 + And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright? + + + IV. + + See how from far upon the eastern road + The star-led wizards haste with odors sweet! + Oh! run; prevent them with thy humble ode, + And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; 25 + Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet, + And join thy voice unto the Angel Quire, + From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire. + + + The Hymn. + + + I. + + It was the winter wild, + While the heaven-born child 30 + All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; + Nature, in awe to him, + Had doffed her gaudy trim, + With her great Master so to sympathize: + It was no season then for her 35 + To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour. + + + II. + + Only with speeches fair + She woos the gentle air + To hide her guilty front with innocent snow, + And on her naked shame, 40 + Pollute with sinful blame, + The saintly veil of maiden white to throw; + Confounded, that her Maker's eyes + Should look so near upon her foul deformities. + + + III. + + But he, her fears to cease, 45 + Sent down the meek-eyed Peace: + She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding + Down through the turning sphere, + His ready harbinger, + With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; 50 + And, waving wide her myrtle wand, + She strikes a universal peace through sea and land. + + + IV. + + No war, or battle's sound, + Was heard the world around; + The idle spear and shield were high uphung; 55 + The hooked chariot stood, + Unstained with hostile blood; + The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; + And kings sat still with awful eye, + As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by. 60 + + + V. + + But peaceful was the night + Wherein the Prince of Light + His reign of peace upon the earth began. + The winds, with wonder whist, + Smoothly the waters kissed, 65 + Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean, + Who now hath quite forgot to rave, + While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. + + + VI. + + The stars, with deep amaze, + Stand fixed in steadfast gaze, 70 + Bending one way their precious influence, + And will not take their flight, + For all the morning light, + Or Lucifer that often warned them thence; + But in their glimmering orbs did glow, 75 + Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go. + + + VII. + + And, though the shady gloom + Had given day her room, + The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed, + And hid his head for shame, 80 + As his inferior flame + The new-enlightened world no more should need: + He saw a greater Sun appear + Than his bright throne or burning axletree could bear. + + + VIII. + + The shepherds on the lawn, 85 + Or ere the point of dawn, + Sat simply chatting in a rustic row; + Full little thought they than + That the mighty Pan + Was kindly come to live with them below: 90 + Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep, + Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep. + + + IX. + + When such music sweet + Their hearts and ears did greet + As never was by mortal finger strook, 95 + Divinely-warbled voice + Answering the stringed noise, + As all their souls in blissful rapture took: + The air, such pleasure loth to lose, 99 + With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close. + + + X. + + Nature, that heard such sound + Beneath the hollow round + Of Cynthia's seat the Airy region thrilling, + Now was almost won + To think her part was done, 105 + And that her reign had here its last fulfilling: + She knew such harmony alone + Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union. + + + XI. + + At last surrounds their sight + A globe of circular light, 110 + That with long beams the shamefaced Night arrayed; + The helmed cherubim + And sworded seraphim + Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed, + Harping in loud and solemn quire, 115 + With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir. + + + XII. + + Such music (as 'tis said) + Before was never made, + But when of old the Sons of Morning sung, + While the Creator great 120 + His constellations set, + And the well-balanced World on hinges hung, + And cast the dark foundations deep, + And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep. + + + XIII. + + Ring out, ye crystal spheres! 125 + Once bless our human ears, + If ye have power to touch our senses so; + And let your silver chime + Move in melodious time; + And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow; 130 + And with your ninefold harmony + Make up full consort to the angelic symphony. + + + XIV. + + For, if such holy song + Enwrap our fancy long, + Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold; 135 + And speckled Vanity + Will sicken soon and die, + And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould; + And Hell itself will pass away, + And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. 140 + + + XV. + + Yea, Truth and Justice then + Will down return to men, + Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, + Mercy will sit between, + Throned in celestial sheen, 145 + With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering; + And Heaven, as at some festival, + Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall. + + + XVI. + + But wisest Fate says No, + This must not yet be so; 150 + The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy + That on the bitter cross + Must redeem our loss, + So both himself and us to glorify: + Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, 155 + The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep. + + + XVII. + + With such a horrid clang + As on Mount Sinai rang, + While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake: + The aged Earth, aghast 160 + With terror of that blast, + Shall from the surface to the centre shake, + When, at the world's last session, + The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne. + + + XVIII. + + And then at last our bliss 165 + Full and perfect is, + But now begins; for from this happy day + The Old Dragon under ground, + In straiter limits bound, + Not half so far casts his usurped sway, 170 + And, wroth to see his kingdom fail, + Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. + + + XIX. + + The Oracles are dumb; + No voice or hideous hum + Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 175 + Apollo from his shrine + Can no more divine, + With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. + No nightly trance, or breathed spell, + Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. 180 + + + XX. + + The lonely mountains o'er, + And the resounding shore, + A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; + From haunted spring, and dale + Edged with poplar pale, 185 + The parting Genius is with sighing sent; + With flower-inwoven tresses torn + The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. + + + XXI. + + In consecrated earth, + And on the holy hearth, 190 + The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; + In urns, and altars round, + A drear and dying sound + Affrights the flamens at their service quaint; + And the chill marble seems to sweat, 195 + While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat. + + + XXII. + + Peor and Baälim + Forsake their temples dim, + With that twice-battered god of Palestine; + And mooned Ashtaroth, 200 + Heaven's queen and mother both, + Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine: + The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn; + In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn. + + + XXIII. + + And sullen Moloch, fled, 205 + Hath left in shadows dread + His burning idol all of blackest hue; + In vain with cymbals' ring + They call the grisly king, + In dismal dance about the furnace blue; 210 + The brutish gods of Nile as fast, + Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste. + + + XXIV. + + Nor is Osiris seen + In Memphian grove or green, 214 + Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud; 215 + Nor can he be at rest + Within his sacred chest; + Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud; + In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark, + The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. 220 + + + XXV. + + He feels from Juda's land + The dreaded Infant's hand; + The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; + Nor all the gods beside + Longer dare abide, 225 + Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: + Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, + Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew. + + + XXVI. + + So, when the sun in bed, + Curtained with cloudy red, 230 + Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, + The flocking shadows pale + Troop to the infernal jail, + Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave, + And the yellow-skirted fays 235 + Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze. + + + XXVII. + + But see! the Virgin blest + Hath laid her Babe to rest. + Time is our tedious song should here have ending: + Heaven's youngest-teemed star 240 + Hath fixed her polished car, + Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending; + And all about the courtly stable + Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable. + + + + + ON SHAKESPEARE. 1630. + + + What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones + The labor of an age in piled stones? + Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid + Under a star-ypointing pyramid? + Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 5 + What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? + Thou in our wonder and astonishment + Hast built thyself a livelong monument. + For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavoring art + Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 10 + Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book + Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, + Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, + Dost make _us_ marble with too much conceiving, + And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie 15 + That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. + + + + + L'ALLEGRO. + + + Hence, loathed Melancholy, + Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born + In Stygian cave forlorn + 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! + Find out some uncouth cell, 5 + Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, + And the night-raven sings; + There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, + As ragged as thy locks, + In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10 + But come, thou Goddess fair and free, + In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, + And by men heart-easing Mirth; + Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, + With two sister Graces more, 15 + To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore: + Or whether (as some sager sing) + The frolic wind that breathes the spring, + Zephyr, with Aurora playing, + As he met her once a-Maying, 20 + There, on beds of violets blue, + And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, + Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, + So buxom, blithe, and debonair. + Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 25 + Jest, and youthful Jollity, + Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, + Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles, + Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, + And love to live in dimple sleek; 30 + Sport that wrinkled Care derides, + And Laughter holding both his sides. + Come, and trip it, as you go, + On the light fantastic toe; + And in thy right hand lead with thee 35 + The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; + And, if I give thee honor due, + Mirth, admit me of thy crew, + To live with her, and live with thee, + In unreproved pleasures free; 40 + To hear the lark begin his flight, + And, singing, startle the dull night, + From his watch-tower in the skies, + Till the dappled dawn doth rise; + Then to come, in spite of sorrow, 45 + And at my window bid good-morrow, + Through the sweet-briar or the vine, + Or the twisted eglantine; + While the cock, with lively din, + Scatters the rear of darkness thin; 50 + And to the stack, or the barn-door, + Stoutly struts his dames before: + Oft listening how the hounds and horn + Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, + From the side of some hoar hill, 55 + Through the high wood echoing shrill: + Sometime walking, not unseen, + By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, + Right against the eastern gate + Where the great Sun begins his state, 60 + Robed in flames and amber light, + The clouds in thousand liveries dight; + While the ploughman, near at hand, + Whistles o'er the furrowed land, + And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 65 + And the mower whets his scythe, + And every shepherd tells his tale + Under the hawthorn in the dale. + Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, + Whilst the landskip round it measures: 70 + Russet lawns, and fallows gray, + Where the nibbling flocks do stray; + Mountains on whose barren breast + The laboring clouds do often rest; + Meadows trim, with daisies pied; 75 + Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; + Towers and battlements it sees + Bosomed high in tufted trees, + Where perhaps some beauty lies, + The cynosure of neighboring eyes. 80 + Hard by a cottage chimney smokes + From betwixt two aged oaks, + Where Corydon and Thyrsis met + Are at their savory dinner set + Of herbs and other country messes, 85 + Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses; + And then in haste her bower she leaves, + With Thestylis to bind the sheaves; + Or, if the earlier season lead, + To the tanned haycock in the mead. 90 + 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 95 + Dancing in the chequered shade, + And young and old come forth to play + On a sunshine holiday, + Till the livelong daylight fail: + Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 100 + With stories told of many a feat, + How Faery Mab the junkets eat. + She was pinched and pulled, she said; + And he, by Friar's lantern led, + Tells how the drudging goblin sweat 105 + To earn his cream-bowl duly set, + When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, + His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn + That ten day-laborers could not end; + Then lies him down, the lubber fiend, 110 + And, stretched out all the chimney's length, + Basks at the fire his hairy strength, + And crop-full out of doors he flings, + Ere the first cock his matin rings. + Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 115 + By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. + Towered cities please us then, + And the busy hum of men, + Where throngs of knights and barons bold, + In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold, 120 + With store of ladies, whose bright eyes + Rain influence, and judge the prize + Of wit or arms, while both contend + To win her grace whom all commend. + There let Hymen oft appear 125 + In saffron robe, with taper clear, + And pomp, and feast, and revelry, + With mask and antique pageantry; + Such sights as youthful poets dream, + On summer eves by haunted stream. 130 + Then to the well-trod stage anon, + If Jonson's learned sock be on, + Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, + Warble his native wood-notes wild, + And ever, against eating cares, 135 + Lap me in soft Lydian airs, + Married to immortal verse, + Such as the meeting soul may pierce, + In notes with many a winding bout + Of linked sweetness long drawn out 140 + With wanton heed and giddy cunning, + The melting voice through mazes running, + Untwisting all the chains that tie + The hidden soul of harmony; + That Orpheus' self may heave his head 145 + From golden slumber on a bed + Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear + Such strains as would have won the ear + Of Pluto to have quite set free + His half-regained Eurydice. 150 + These delights if thou canst give, + Mirth, with thee I mean to live. + + + + + IL PENSEROSO. + + + Hence, vain deluding Joys, + The brood of Folly without father bred! + How little you bested, + Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! + Dwell in some idle brain, 5 + And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, + As thick and numberless + As the gay motes that people the sun-beams, + Or likest hovering dreams, + The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. 10 + But, hail! thou Goddess sage and holy! + Hail, divinest Melancholy! + Whose saintly visage is too bright + To hit the sense of human sight, + And therefore to our weaker view, 15 + O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue; + Black, but such as in esteem + Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, + Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove + To set her beauty's praise above 20 + The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended. + Yet thou art higher far descended: + Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore + To solitary Saturn bore; + His daughter she; in Saturn's reign 25 + Such mixture was not held a stain. + Oft in glimmering bowers and glades + He met her, and in secret shades + Of woody Ida's inmost grove, + Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. 30 + Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure, + Sober, steadfast, and demure, + All in a robe of darkest grain, + Flowing with majestic train, + And sable stole of cypress lawn 35 + Over thy decent shoulders drawn. + Come; but keep thy wonted state, + With even step, and musing gait, + And looks commercing with the skies + Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: 40 + There, held in holy passion still, + Forget thyself to marble, till + With a sad leaden downward cast + Thou fix them on the earth as fast. + And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, 45 + Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, + And hears the Muses in a ring + Aye round about Jove's altar sing; + And add to these retired Leisure, + That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; 50 + But, first and chiefest, with thee bring + Him that yon soars on golden wing, + Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, + The Cherub Contemplation; + And the mute Silence hist along, 55 + 'Less Philomel will deign a song, + In her sweetest, saddest plight, + Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, + While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke + Gently o'er the accustomed oak. 60 + Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, + Most musical, most melancholy! + Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among + I woo, to hear thy even-song; + And, missing thee, I walk unseen 65 + On the dry smooth-shaven green, + To behold the wandering moon, + Riding near her highest noon, + Like one that had been led astray + Through the heaven's wide pathless way, 70 + And oft, as if her head she bowed, + Stooping through a fleecy cloud. + Oft, on a plat of rising ground, + I hear the far-off curfew sound, + Over some wide-watered shore, 75 + Swinging slow with sullen roar; + Or, if the air will not permit, + Some still removed place will fit, + Where glowing embers through the room + Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, 80 + Far from all resort of mirth, + Save the cricket on the hearth, + Or the bellman's drowsy charm + To bless the doors from nightly harm. + Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, 85 + Be seen in some high lonely tower, + Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, + With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere + The spirit of Plato, to unfold + What worlds or what vast regions hold 90 + The immortal mind that hath forsook + Her mansion in this fleshly nook; + And of those demons that are found + In fire, air, flood, or underground, + Whose power hath a true consent 95 + With planet or with element. + Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy + In sceptred pall come sweeping by, + Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, + Or the tale of Troy divine, 100 + Or what (though rare) of later age + Ennobled hath the buskined stage. + But, O sad Virgin! that thy power + Might raise Musæus from his bower; + Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 105 + Such notes as, warbled to the string, + Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, + And made Hell grant what love did seek; + Or call up him that left half-told + The story of Cambuscan bold, 110 + Of Camball, and of Algarsife, + And who had Canace to wife, + That owned the virtuous ring and glass, + And of the wondrous horse of brass + On which the Tartar king did ride; 115 + And if aught else great bards beside + In sage and solemn tunes have sung, + Of turneys, and of trophies hung, + Of forests, and enchantments drear, + Where more is meant than meets the ear. 120 + Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, + Till civil-suited Morn appear, + Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont + With the Attic boy to hunt, + But kerchieft in a comely cloud, 125 + While rocking winds are piping loud + Or ushered with a shower still, + When the gust hath blown his fill, + Ending on the rustling leaves, + With minute-drops from off the eaves. 130 + And, when the sun begins to fling + His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring + To arched walks of twilight groves, + And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, + Of pine, or monumental oak, 135 + Where the rude axe with heaved stroke + Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, + Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. + There, in close covert, by some brook, + Where no profaner eye may look, 140 + Hide me from day's garish eye, + While the bee with honeyed thigh, + That at her flowery work doth sing, + And the waters murmuring, + With such consort as they keep, 145 + Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. + And let some strange mysterious dream + Wave at his wings, in airy stream + Of lively portraiture displayed, + Softly on my eyelids laid; 150 + And, as I wake, sweet music breathe + Above, about, or underneath, + Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, + Or the unseen Genius of the wood. + But let my due feet never fail 155 + To walk the studious cloister's pale, + And love the high embowed roof, + With antique pillars massy-proof, + And storied windows richly dight, + Casting a dim religious light. 160 + There let the pealing organ blow, + To the full-voiced quire below, + In service high and anthems clear, + As may with sweetness, through mine ear, + Dissolve me into ecstasies, 165 + And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. + And may at last my weary age + Find out the peaceful hermitage, + The hairy gown and mossy cell, + Where I may sit and rightly spell 170 + Of every star that heaven doth shew, + And every herb that sips the dew, + Till old experience do attain + To something like prophetic strain. + These pleasures, Melancholy, give; 175 + And I with thee will choose to live. + + + + + ARCADES. + + +_Part of an Entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby at +Harefield by some Noble Persons of her Family; who appear on the Scene in +pastoral habit, moving toward the seat of state, with this song:--_ + + + I. _Song._ + + Look, Nymphs and Shepherds, look! + What sudden blaze of majesty + Is that which we from hence descry, + Too divine to be mistook? + This, this is she 5 + To whom our vows and wishes bend: + Here our solemn search hath end. + Fame, that her high worth to raise + Seemed erst so lavish and profuse, + We may justly now accuse 10 + Of detraction from her praise: + Less than half we find expressed; + Envy bid conceal the rest. + + Mark what radiant state she spreads, + In circle round her shining throne 15 + Shooting her beams like silver threads: + This, this is she alone, + Sitting like a goddess bright + In the centre of her light. + + Might she the wise Latona be, 20 + Or the towered Cybele, + Mother of a hundred gods? + Juno dares not give her odds: + Who had thought this clime had held + A deity so unparalleled? 25 + + As they come forward, the Genius of the Wood appears, + and, turning toward them, speaks. + + _Gen._ Stay, gentle Swains, for, though in this disguise, + I see bright honor sparkle through your eyes; + Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung + Of that renowned flood, so often sung, + Divine Alpheus, who, by secret sluice, 30 + Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse; + And ye, the breathing roses of the wood, + Fair silver-buskined Nymphs, as great and good. + I know this quest of yours and free intent + Was all in honor and devotion meant 35 + To the great mistress of yon princely shrine, + Whom with low reverence I adore as mine, + And with all helpful service will comply + To further this night's glad solemnity, + And lead ye where ye may more near behold 40 + What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold; + Which I full oft, amidst those shades alone, + Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon. + For know, by lot from Jove, I am the Power + Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower, 45 + To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove + With ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove; + And all my plants I save from nightly ill + Of noisome winds and blasting vapors chill; + And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, 50 + And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue, + Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites, + Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites. + When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round + Over the mount, and all this hallowed ground; 55 + And early, ere the odorous breath of morn + Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasselled horn + Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, + Number my ranks, and visit every sprout + With puissant words and murmurs made to bless. 60 + But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness + Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I + To the celestial Sirens' harmony, + That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, + And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 65 + And turn the adamantine spindle round + On which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, + To lull the daughters of Necessity, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, 70 + And the low world in measured motion draw + After the heavenly tune, which none can hear + Of human mould with gross unpurged ear. + And yet such music worthiest were to blaze + The peerless height of her immortal praise 75 + Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit, + If my inferior hand or voice could hit + Inimitable sounds. Yet, as we go, + Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show + I will assay, her worth to celebrate, 80 + And so attend ye toward her glittering state; + Where ye may all, that are of noble stem, + Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem. + + + II. _Song._ + + O'er the smooth enamelled green, + Where no print of step hath been, 85 + Follow me, as I sing + And touch the warbled string: + Under the shady roof + Of branching elm star-proof + Follow me. 90 + I will bring you where she sits, + Clad in splendor as befits + Her deity. + Such a rural Queen + All Arcadia hath not seen. 95 + + + III. _Song._ + + Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more + By sandy Ladon's lilied banks; + On old Lycæus, or Cyllene hoar, + Trip no more in twilight ranks; + Though Erymanth your loss deplore, 100 + A better soil shall give ye thanks. + From the stony Mænalus + Bring your flocks, and live with us; + Here ye shall have greater grace, + To serve the Lady of this place. 105 + Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were, + Yet Syrinx well might wait on her. + Such a rural Queen + All Arcadia hath not seen. + + + + + AT A SOLEMN MUSIC. + + + Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy, + Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse, + Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ, + Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce; + And to our high-raised phantasy present 5 + That undisturbed song of pure concent, + Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne + To Him that sits thereon, + With saintly shout and solemn jubilee; + Where the bright Seraphim in burning row 10 + Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow, + And the Cherubic host in thousand quires + Touch their immortal harps of golden wires, + With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms, + Hymns devout and holy psalms 15 + Singing everlastingly: + That we on Earth, with undiscording voice, + May rightly answer that melodious noise; + As once we did, till disproportioned sin + Jarred against nature's chime, and with harsh din 20 + Broke the fair music that all creatures made + To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed + In perfect diapason, whilst they stood + In first obedience, and their state of good. + O, may we soon again renew that song, 25 + And keep in tune with Heaven, till God ere long + To his celestial consort us unite, + To live with Him, and sing in endless morn of light! + + + + + COMUS. + + + A MASQUE PRESENTED AT LUDLOW CASTLE, 1634. + + + THE PERSONS. + + + The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the habit of Thyrsis. + Comus, with his Crew. + The Lady. + First Brother. + Second Brother. + Sabrina, the Nymph. + + + The first Scene discovers a wild wood. + + The Attendant Spirit descends or enters. + + _Spirit._ Before the starry threshold of Jove's court + My mansion is, where those immortal shapes + Of bright aerial spirits live insphered + In regions mild of calm and serene air, + Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 5 + Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care, + Confined and pestered in this pinfold here, + Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, + Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, + After this mortal change, to her true servants 10 + Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats. + Yet some there be that by due steps aspire + To lay their just hands on that golden key + That opes the palace of eternity. + To such my errand is; and, but for such, 15 + I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds + With the rank vapors of this sin-worn mould. + But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway + Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream + Took in, by lot 'twixt high and nether Jove. 20 + Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles + That, like to rich and various gems, inlay + The unadorned bosom of the deep; + Which he, to grace his tributary gods, + By course commits to several government, 25 + And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns + And wield their little tridents. But this Isle, + The greatest and the best of all the main, + He quarters to his blue-haired deities; + And all this tract that fronts the falling sun 30 + A noble Peer of mickle trust and power + Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide + An old and haughty nation, proud in arms: + Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore, + Are coming to attend their father's state, 35 + And new-intrusted sceptre. But their way + Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood, + The nodding horror of those shady brows + Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger; + And here their tender age might suffer peril, 40 + But that, by quick command from sovran Jove, + I was despatched for their defence and guard! + And listen why; for I will tell you now + What never yet was heard in tale or song, + From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. 45 + Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape + Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine, + After the Tuscan mariners transformed, + Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed, + On Circe's island fell. (Who knows not Circe, 50 + The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup + Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, + And downward fell into a grovelling swine?) + This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks, + With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth, 55 + Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son + Much like his father, but his mother more, + Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named: + Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age, + Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60 + At last betakes him to this ominous wood, + And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered, + Excels his mother at her mighty art; + Offering to every weary traveller + His orient liquor in a crystal glass, 65 + To quench the drouth of Phoebus; which as they taste + (For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst), + Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance, + The express resemblance of the gods, is changed + Into some brutish form of wolf or bear, 70 + Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat, + All other parts remaining as they were. + And they, so perfect in their misery, + Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, + But boast themselves more comely than before, 75 + And all their friends and native home forget, + To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty. + Therefore, when any favored of high Jove + Chances to pass through this adventurous glade, + Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star 80 + I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy, + As now I do. But first I must put off + These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris' woof, + And take the weeds and likeness of a swain + That to the service of this house belongs, 85 + Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song, + Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar, + And hush the waving woods; nor of less faith, + And in this office of his mountain watch + Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90 + Of this occasion. But I hear the tread + Of hateful steps; I must be viewless 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 apparel glistering. They come in +making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands. + + _Comus._ The star that bids the shepherd fold + Now the top of heaven doth hold; + And the gilded car of day 95 + His glowing axle doth allay + In the steep Atlantic stream: + And the slope sun his upward beam + Shoots against the dusky pole, + Pacing toward the other goal 100 + Of his chamber in the east. + Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast, + Midnight shout and revelry, + Tipsy dance and jollity. + Braid your locks with rosy twine, 105 + Dropping odors, dropping wine. + Rigor now is gone to bed; + And Advice with scrupulous head, + Strict Age, and sour Severity, + With their grave saws, in slumber lie. 110 + We, that are of purer fire, + Imitate the starry quire, + Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, + Lead in swift round the months and years. + The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, 115 + Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; + And on the tawny sands and shelves + Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. + By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, + The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, 120 + Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: + What hath night to do with sleep? + Night hath better sweets to prove; + Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. + Come, let us our rites begin; 125 + 'Tis only daylight that makes sin, + Which these dun shades will ne'er report. + Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, + Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame + Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130 + That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb + Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, + And makes one blot of all the air! + Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, + Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend 135 + Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end + Of all thy dues be done, and none left out + Ere the blabbing eastern scout, + The nice Morn on the Indian steep, + From her cabined loop-hole peep, 140 + And to the tell-tale Sun descry + Our concealed solemnity. + Come, knit hands, and beat the ground + In a light fantastic round. + + + _The Measure._ + + Break off, break off! I feel the different pace 145 + Of some chaste footing near about this ground. + Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees; + Our number may affright. Some virgin sure + (For so I can distinguish by mine art) + Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, 150 + And to my wily trains: I shall ere long + Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed + About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl + My dazzling spells into the spongy air, + Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, 155 + 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. + I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, 160 + And well-placed words of glozing courtesy, + Baited with reasons not unplausible, + Wind me into the easy-hearted man, + And hug him into snares. When once her eye + Hath met the virtue of this magic dust 165 + I shall appear some harmless villager, + Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear. + But here she comes; I fairly step aside, + And hearken, if I may her business hear. + + The Lady enters. + + _Lady._ This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, 170 + My best guide now. Methought it was the sound + Of riot and ill-managed merriment, + Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe + Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds, + When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, 175 + In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan, + And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth + To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence + Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else + Shall I inform my unacquainted feet 180 + In the blind mazes of this tangled wood? + My brothers, when they saw me wearied out + With this long way, resolving here to lodge + Under the spreading favor of these pines, + Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side 185 + To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit + As the kind hospitable woods provide. + They left me then when the gray-hooded Even, + Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed, + Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain. 190 + But where they are, and why they came not back, + Is now the labor of my thoughts. 'Tis likeliest + They had engaged their wandering steps too far; + And envious darkness, ere they could return, + Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night, 195 + Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, + In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars + That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps + With everlasting oil, to give due light + To the misled and lonely traveller? 200 + This is the place, as well as I may guess, + Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth + Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear; + Yet nought but single darkness do I find. + What might this be? A thousand fantasies 205 + Begin to throng into my memory, + Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, + And airy tongues that syllable men's names + On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. + These thoughts may startle well, but not astound 210 + The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended + By a strong siding champion, Conscience. + O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, + Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings, + And thou unblemished form of Chastity! 215 + I see thee visibly, and now believe + That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill + Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, + Would send a glistering guardian, if need were, + To keep my life and honor unassailed.... 220 + Was I deceived, 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, + And casts a gleam over this tufted grove. 225 + I cannot hallo to my brothers, but + Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest + I'll venture; for my new-enlivened spirits + Prompt me, and they perhaps are not far off. + + + _Song._ + + Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen 230 + Within thy airy shell + By slow Meander's margent green, + And in the violet-embroidered vale + Where the love-lorn nightingale + Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well: 235 + Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair + That likest thy Narcissus are? + O, if thou have + Hid them in some flowery cave, + Tell me but where, 240 + Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere! + So may'st thou be translated to the skies, + And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies! + + _Comus._ Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould + Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? 245 + Sure something holy lodges in that breast, + And with these raptures moves the vocal air + To testify his hidden residence. + How sweetly did they float upon the wings + Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, 250 + At every fall smoothing the raven down + Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard + My mother Circe with the Sirens three, + Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, + Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, 255 + Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, + And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept, + And chid her barking waves into attention, + And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause. + Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, 260 + And in sweet madness robbed it of itself; + But such a sacred and home-felt delight, + Such sober certainty of waking bliss, + I never heard till now. I'll speak to her, + And she shall be my queen.--Hail, foreign wonder! 265 + Whom certain these rough shades did never breed, + Unless the goddess that in rural shrine + Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song + Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog + To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood. 270 + + _Lady._ Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise + That is addressed to unattending ears. + Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift + How to regain my severed company, + Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo 275 + To give me answer from her mossy couch. + + _Comus._ What chance, good Lady, hath bereft you thus? + + _Lady._ Dim darkness and this leavy labyrinth. + + _Comus._ Could that divide you from near-ushering guides? + + _Lady._ They left me weary on a grassy turf. 280 + + _Comus._ By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why? + + _Lady._ To seek i' the valley some cool friendly spring. + + _Comus._ And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady? + + _Lady._ They were but twain, and purposed quick return. + + _Comus._ Perhaps forestalling night prevented them. 285 + + _Lady._ How easy my misfortune is to hit! + + _Comus._ Imports their loss, beside the present need? + + _Lady._ No less than if I should my brothers lose. + + _Comus._ Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom? + + _Lady._ As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips. 290 + + _Comus._ Two such I saw, what time the labored ox + In his loose traces from the furrow came, + And the swinked hedger at his supper sat. + I saw them under a green mantling vine, + That crawls along the side of yon small hill, 295 + Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots; + Their port was more than human, as they stood. + I took it for a faery vision + Of some gay creatures of the element, + That in the colors of the rainbow live, 300 + And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook, + And, as I passed, I worshiped. If those you seek, + It were a journey like the path to Heaven + To help you find them. + + _Lady._ Gentle villager, + What readiest way would bring me to that place? 305 + + _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-pilot's art, + Without the sure guess of well-practised feet. 310 + + _Comus._ I know each lane, and every alley green, + Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood, + And every bosky bourn from side to side, + My daily walks and ancient neighborhood; + And, if your stray attendance be yet lodged, 315 + Or shroud within these limits, I shall know + Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark + From her thatched pallet rouse. If otherwise, + I can conduct you, Lady, to a low + But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 320 + Till further quest. + + _Lady._ Shepherd, I take thy word, + And trust thy honest-offered courtesy, + Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, + With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls + And courts of princes, where it first was named, 325 + And yet is most pretended. In a place + Less warranted than this, or less secure, + I cannot be, that I should fear to change it. + Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial + To my proportioned strength! Shepherd, lead on.... 330 + + The Two Brothers. + + _Eld. Bro._ Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou, fair moon, + That wont'st to love the traveller's benison, + Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud, + And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here + In double night of darkness and of shades; 335 + Or, if your influence be quite dammed up + With black usurping mists, some gentle taper, + Though a rush-candle from the wicker hole + Of some clay habitation, visit us + With thy long levelled rule of streaming light, 340 + And thou shalt be our star of Arcady, + Or Tyrian Cynosure. + + _Sec. Bro._ Or, if our eyes + Be barred that happiness, might we but hear + The folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes, + Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, 345 + Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock + Count the night-watches to his feathery dames, + 'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering, + In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. + But, Oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! 350 + Where may she wander now, whither betake her + From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles? + Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, + Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm + Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. 355 + What if in wild amazement and affright, + Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp + Of savage hunger, or of savage heat! + + _Eld. Bro._ Peace, brother: be not over-exquisite + To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; 360 + 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, + How bitter is such self-delusion! 365 + I do not think my sister so to seek, + Or so unprincipled in virtue's book, + And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, + As that the single want of light and noise + (Not being in danger, as I trust she is not) 370 + Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts, + And put them into misbecoming plight. + Virtue could see to do what Virtue would + By her own radiant light, though sun and moon + Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self 375 + Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, + Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation, + She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, + That, in the various bustle of resort, + Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired. 380 + He that has light within his own clear breast + May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day: + But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts + Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; + Himself is his own dungeon. + + _Sec. Bro._ 'Tis most true 385 + That musing Meditation most affects + The pensive secrecy of desert cell, + Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds, + And sits as safe as in a senate-house; + For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390 + His few books, or his beads, or maple dish, + Or do his gray hairs any violence? + But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree + Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard + Of dragon-watch with unenchanted eye 395 + To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit, + From the rash hand of bold Incontinence. + You may as well spread out the unsunned heaps + Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den, + And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope 400 + Danger will wink on Opportunity, + And let a single helpless maiden pass + Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste. + Of night or loneliness it recks me not; + I fear the dread events that dog them both, 405 + Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person + Of our unowned sister. + + _Eld. Bro._ I do not, brother, + Infer as if I thought my sister's state + Secure without all doubt or controversy; + Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear 410 + Does arbitrate the event, my nature is + That I incline to hope rather than fear, + And gladly banish squint suspicion. + My sister is not so defenceless left + As you imagine; she has a hidden strength, 415 + Which you remember not. + + _Sec. Bro._ What hidden strength, + Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that? + + _Eld. Bro._ I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength, + Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own. + 'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity: 420 + She that has that is clad in complete steel, + And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen, + May trace huge forests, and unharbored heaths, + Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds; + Where, through the sacred rays of chastity, 425 + No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer, + Will dare to soil her virgin purity. + Yea, there where very desolation dwells, + By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades, + She may pass on with unblenched majesty, 430 + Be it not done in pride, or in presumption. + Some say no evil thing that walks by night, + In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, + Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost, + That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, 435 + No goblin or swart faery of the mine, + Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity. + Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call + Antiquity from the old schools of Greece + To testify the arms of chastity? 440 + Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow, + Fair silver-shafted queen forever chaste, + Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness + And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought + The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men 445 + Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. + What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield + That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, + Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, + But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 + And noble grace that dashed brute violence + With sudden adoration and blank awe? + So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity + That, when a soul is found sincerely so, + A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 455 + Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, + And in clear dream and solemn vision + Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear; + Till oft converse with heavenly habitants + Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, 460 + The unpolluted temple of the mind, + And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, + Till all be made immortal. But, when lust, + By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, + But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 465 + Lets in defilement to the inward parts, + The soul grows clotted by contagion, + Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose + The divine property of her first being. + Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp 470 + Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, + Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, + As loth to leave the body that it loved, + And linked itself by carnal sensualty + To a degenerate and degraded state. 475 + + _Sec. Bro._ How charming is divine Philosophy! + Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, + But musical as is Apollo's lute, + And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, + Where no crude surfeit reigns. + + _Eld. Bro._ List! list! I hear 480 + Some far-off hallo break the silent air. + + _Sec. Bro._ Methought so too; what should it be? + + _Eld. Bro._ For certain, + Either some one, like us, night-foundered here, + Or else some neighbor woodman, or, at worst, + Some roving robber calling to his fellows. 485 + + _Sec. Bro._ Heaven help my sister! Again, again, and near! + Best draw, and stand upon our guard. + + _Eld. Bro._ I'll hallo. + If he be friendly, he comes well: if not, + Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be for us! + + The Attendant Spirit, habited like a shepherd. + + That hallo I should know. What are you? speak. 490 + Come not too near; you fall on iron stakes else. + + _Spir._ What voice is that? my young lord? speak again. + + _Sec. Bro._ O brother, 'tis my father's Shepherd, sure. + + _Eld. Bro._ Thyrsis! whose artful strains have oft delayed + The huddling brook to hear his madrigal, 495 + And sweetened every musk-rose of the dale. + How camest thou here, good swain? Hath any ram + Slipped from the fold, or young kid lost his dam, + Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook? + How could'st thou find this dark sequestered nook? 500 + + _Spir._ O my loved master's heir, and his next joy, + I came not here on such a trivial toy + As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth + Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth + That doth enrich these downs is worth a thought 505 + To this my errand, and the care it brought. + But, oh! my virgin Lady, where is she? + How chance she is not in your company? + + _Eld. Bro._ To tell thee sadly, Shepherd, without blame + Or our neglect, we lost her as we came. 510 + + _Spir._ Ay me unhappy! then my fears are true. + + _Eld. Bro._ What fears, good Thyrsis? Prithee briefly shew. + + _Spir._ I'll tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous + (Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance) + What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly Muse, 515 + Storied of old in high immortal verse + Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles, + And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell; + For such there be, but unbelief is blind. + Within the navel of this hideous wood, 520 + Immured in cypress shades, a sorcerer dwells, + Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus, + Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries, + And here to every thirsty wanderer + By sly enticement gives his baneful cup, 525 + With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison + The visage quite transforms of him that drinks, + And the inglorious likeness of a beast + Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage + Charactered in the face. This have I learnt 530 + Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly crofts + That brow this bottom glade; whence night by night + He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl + Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey, + Doing abhorred rites to Hecate 535 + In their obscurèd haunts of inmost bowers. + Yet have they many baits and guileful spells + To inveigle and invite the unwary sense + Of them that pass unweeting by the way. + This evening late, by then the chewing flocks 540 + Had ta'en their supper on the savory herb + Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold, + I sat me down to watch upon a bank + With ivy canopied, and interwove + With flaunting honeysuckle, and began, 545 + Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy, + To meditate my rural minstrelsy, + Till fancy had her fill. But ere a close + The wonted roar was up amidst the woods, + And filled the air with barbarous dissonance; 550 + At which I ceased, and listened them a while, + Till an unusual stop of sudden silence + Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds + That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep. + At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 555 + Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, + And stole upon the air, that even Silence + Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might + Deny her nature, and be never more, + Still to be so displaced. I was all ear, 560 + And took in strains that might create a soul + Under the ribs of Death. But, oh! ere long + Too well I did perceive it was the voice + Of my most honored Lady, your dear sister. + Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear; 565 + And 'O poor hapless nightingale,' thought I, + 'How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare!' + Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste, + Through paths and turnings often trod by day, + Till, guided by mine ear, I found the place 570 + Where that damned wizard, hid in sly disguise + (For so by certain signs I knew), had met + Already, ere my best speed could prevent, + The aidless innocent lady, his wished prey; + Who gently asked if he had seen such two, 575 + Supposing him some neighbor villager. + Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed + Ye were the two she meant; with that I sprung + Into swift flight, till I had found you here; + But further know I not. + + _Sec. Bro._ O night and shades, 580 + How are ye joined with hell in triple knot + Against the unarmed weakness of one virgin, + Alone and helpless! Is this the confidence + You gave me, brother? + + _Eld. Bro._ Yes, and keep it still; + Lean on it safely; not a period 585 + Shall be unsaid for me. Against the threats + Of malice or of sorcery, or that power + Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm: + Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, + Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled; 590 + Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm + Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. + But evil on itself shall back recoil, + And mix no more with goodness, when at last, + Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, 595 + It shall be in eternal restless change + Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, + The pillared firmament is rottenness, + And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on! + Against the opposing will and arm of Heaven 600 + May never this just sword be lifted up; + But for that damned magician, let him be girt + With all the griesly legions that troop + Under the sooty flag of Acheron, + Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms 605 + 'Twixt Africa and Ind, I'll find him out, + And force him to return his purchase back, + Or drag him by the curls to a foul death, + Cursed as his life. + + _Spir._ Alas! good venturous youth, + I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise; 610 + But here thy sword can do thee little stead. + Far other arms and other weapons must + Be those that quell the might of hellish charms. + He with his bare wand can unthread thy joints, + And crumble all thy sinews. + + _Eld. Bro._ Why, prithee, Shepherd, 615 + How durst thou then thyself approach so near + As to make this relation? + + _Spir._ Care and utmost shifts + How to secure the Lady from surprisal + Brought to my mind a certain shepherd lad, + Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled 620 + In every virtuous plant and healing herb + That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray. + He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing; + Which when I did, he on the tender grass + Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy, 625 + And in requital ope his leathern scrip, + And show me simples of a thousand names, + Telling their strange and vigorous faculties. + Amongst the rest a small unsightly root, + But of divine effect, he culled me out. 630 + The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it, + But in another country, as he said, + Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil: + Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain + Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon; 635 + And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly + That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave. + He called it Hæmony, and gave it me, + And bade me keep it as of sovran use + 'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp, 640 + Or ghastly Furies' apparition. + I pursed it up, but little reckoning made, + Till now that this extremity compelled. + But now I find it true; for by this means + I knew the foul enchanter, though disguised, 645 + Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells, + And yet came off. If you have this about you + (As I will give you when we go) you may + Boldly assault the necromancer's hall; + Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood 650 + And brandished blade rush on him: break his glass, + And shed the luscious liquor on the ground; + But seize his wand. Though he and his curst crew + Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high, + Or, like the sons of Vulcan, vomit smoke, 655 + Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink. + + _Eld. Bro._ Thyrsis, lead on apace; I'll follow thee; + And some good angel bear a shield before us! + +The Scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all manner of +deliciousness: soft music, tables spread with all dainties. Comus appears +with his rabble, and the Lady set in an enchanted chair: to whom he +offers his glass; which she puts by, and goes about to rise. + + _Comus._ Nay, Lady, sit. If I but wave this wand, + Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster, 660 + And you a statue, or as Daphne was, + Root-bound, that fled Apollo. + + _Lady._ Fool, do not boast. + Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind + With all thy charms, although this corporal rind + Thou hast immanacled while Heaven sees good. 665 + + _Comus._ Why are you vexed, Lady? why do you frown? + Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from these gates + Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures + That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts, + When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns 670 + Brisk as the April buds in primrose season. + And first behold this cordial julep here, + That flames and dances in his crystal bounds, + With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed. + Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone 675 + In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena + Is of such power to stir up joy as this, + To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst. + Why should you be so cruel to yourself, + And to those dainty limbs, which Nature lent 680 + For gentle usage and soft delicacy? + But you invert the covenants of her trust, + And harshly deal, like an ill borrower, + With that which you received on other terms, + Scorning the unexempt condition 685 + By which all mortal frailty must subsist, + Refreshment after toil, ease after pain, + That have been tired all day without repast, + And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin, + This will restore all soon. + + _Lady._ 'Twill not, false traitor! 690 + 'Twill not restore the truth and honesty + That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies. + Was this the cottage and the safe abode + Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these, + These oughly-headed monsters? Mercy guard me! 695 + Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver! + Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence + With vizored falsehood and base forgery? + And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here + With liquorish baits, fit to ensnare a brute? 700 + Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets, + I would not taste thy treasonous offer. None + But such as are good men can give good things; + And that which is not good is not delicious + To a well-governed and wise appetite. 705 + + _Comus._ O foolishness of men! that lend their ears + To those budge doctors of the stoic fur, + And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub, + Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence! + Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth 710 + With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, + Covering the earth with odors, fruits, and flocks, + Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, + But all to please and sate the curious taste? + And set to work millions of spinning worms, 715 + That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk, + To deck her sons; and, that no corner might + Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins + She hutched the all-worshipped ore and precious gems, + To store her children with. If all the world 720 + Should, in a fit of temperance, feed on pulse, + Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, + The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, + Not half his riches known, and yet despised; + And we should serve him as a grudging master, 725 + As a penurious niggard of his wealth, + And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons, + Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight, + And strangled with her waste fertility: + The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes, 730 + The herds would over-multitude their lords; + The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought diamonds + Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, + And so bestud with stars, that they below + Would grow inured to light, and come at last 735 + To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. + List, Lady; be not coy, and be not cozened + With that same vaunted name, Virginity. + Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded, + But must be current; and the good thereof 740 + Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, + Unsavory in the enjoyment of itself. + If you let slip time, like a neglected rose + It withers on the stalk with languished head. + Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown 745 + In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, + Where most may wonder at the workmanship. + It is for homely features to keep home; + They had their name thence: coarse complexions + And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply 750 + The sampler, and to tease the huswife's wool. + What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that, + Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn? + There was another meaning in these gifts; + Think what, and be advised; you are but young yet. 755 + + _Lady._ I had not thought to have unlocked my lips + In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler + Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes, + Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb. + I hate when vice can bolt her arguments 760 + And virtue has no tongue to check her pride. + Impostor! do not charge most innocent Nature, + As if she would her children should be riotous + With her abundance. She, good cateress, + Means her provision only to the good, 765 + That live according to her sober laws, + And holy dictate of spare Temperance. + If every just man that now pines with want + Had but a moderate and beseeming share + Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury 770 + Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, + Nature's full blessings would be well-dispensed + In unsuperfluous even proportion, + And she no whit encumbered with her store; + And then the Giver would be better thanked, 775 + His praise due paid: for swinish gluttony + Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast, + But with besotted base ingratitude + Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on? + Or have I said enow? To him that dares 780 + Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words + Against the sun-clad power of chastity + Fain would I something say;--yet to what end? + Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend + The sublime notion and high mystery 785 + That must be uttered to unfold the sage + And serious doctrine of Virginity; + And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know + More happiness than this thy present lot. + Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric, 790 + That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence; + Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced. + Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth + Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits + To such a flame of sacred vehemence 795 + That dumb things would be moved to sympathize, + And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake, + Till all thy magic structures, reared so high, + Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head. + + _Comus._ She fables not. I feel that I do fear 800 + Her words set off by some superior power; + And, though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew + Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove + Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus + To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble, 805 + And try her yet more strongly,--Come, no more! + This is mere moral babble, and direct + Against the canon laws of our foundation. + I must not suffer this; yet 'tis but the lees + And settlings of a melancholy blood. 810 + But this will cure all straight; one sip of this + Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight + Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and taste.... + +The Brothers rush in with swords drawn, wrest his glass out of his hand, +and break it against the ground: his rout make sign of resistance, but +are all driven in. The Attendant Spirit comes in. + + _Spir._ What! have you let the false enchanter scape? + O ye mistook; ye should have snatched his wand, 815 + And bound him fast. Without his rod reversed, + And backward mutters of dissevering power, + We cannot free the Lady that sits here + In stony fetters fixed and motionless. + Yet stay: be not disturbed; now I bethink me, 820 + Some other means I have which may be used, + Which once of Meliboeus old I learnt, + The soothest shepherd that e'er piped on plains. + There is a gentle Nymph not far from hence, + That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream: 825 + Sabrina is her name: a virgin pure; + Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine, + That had the sceptre from his father Brute. + She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit + Of her enraged stepdame, Guendolen, 830 + Commended her fair innocence to the flood + That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course. + The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played, + Held up their pearled wrists, and took her in, + Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall; 835 + Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head, + And gave her to his daughters to imbathe + In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel, + And through the porch and inlet of each sense + Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived, 840 + And underwent a quick immortal change, + Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains + Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve + Visits the herds along the twilight meadows, + Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs 845 + That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, + Which she with precious vialed liquors heals: + For which the shepherds, at their festivals, + Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, + And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream 850 + Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils. + And, as the old swain said, she can unlock + The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell, + If she be right invoked in warbled song; + For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift 855 + To aid a virgin, such as was herself, + In hard-besetting need. This will I try, + And add the power of some adjuring verse. + + + _Song._ + + Sabrina fair, + Listen where thou art sitting 860 + Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, + In twisted braids of lilies knitting + The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; + Listen for dear honor's sake, + Goddess of the silver lake, 865 + Listen and save! + + Listen, and appear to us, + In name of great Oceanus, + By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace, + And Tethys' grave majestic pace; 870 + By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look, + And the Carpathian wizard's hook; + By scaly Triton's winding shell, + And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell; + By Leucothea's lovely hands, 875 + And her son that rules the strands; + By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet, + And the songs of Sirens sweet; + By dead Parthenope's dear tomb, + And fair Ligea's golden comb, 880 + Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks + Sleeking her soft alluring locks; + By all the nymphs that nightly dance + Upon thy streams with wily glance; + Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head 885 + From thy coral-paven bed, + And bridle in thy headlong wave, + Till thou our summons answered have. + Listen and save! + + Sabrina rises, attended by Water-nymphs, and sings. + + By the rushy-fringed bank, 890 + Where grow the willow and the osier dank, + My sliding chariot stays, + Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen + Of turkis blue, and emerald green, + That in the channel strays: 895 + Whilst from off the waters fleet + Thus I set my printless feet + O'er the cowslip's velvet head, + That bends not as I tread. + Gentle swain, at thy request 900 + I am here! + + _Spir._ Goddess dear, + We implore thy powerful hand + To undo the charmed band + Of true virgin here distressed 905 + Through the force and through the wile + Of unblessed enchanter vile. + + _Sabr._ Shepherd, 'tis my office best + To help ensnared chastity. + Brightest Lady, look on me. 910 + Thus I sprinkle on thy breast + Drops that from my fountain pure + I have kept of precious cure; + Thrice upon thy finger's tip, + Thrice upon thy rubied lip: 915 + Next this marble venomed seat, + Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, + I touch with chaste palms moist and cold. + Now the spell hath lost his hold, + And I must haste ere morning hour 920 + To wait in Amphitrite's bower. + + Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of her seat. + + _Spir._ Virgin, daughter of Locrine, + Sprung of old Anchises' line, + May thy brimmed waves for this + Their full tribute never miss 925 + From a thousand petty rills, + That tumble down the snowy hills: + Summer drouth or singed air + Never scorch thy tresses fair, + Nor wet October's torrent flood 930 + Thy molten crystal fill with mud; + May thy billows roll ashore + The beryl and the golden ore; + May thy lofty head be crowned + With many a tower and terrace round, 935 + And here and there thy banks upon + With groves of myrrh and cinnamon. + Come, Lady; while Heaven lends us grace, + Let us fly this cursed place, + Lest the sorcerer us entice 940 + With some other new device. + Not a waste or needless sound + Till we come to holier ground. + I shall be your faithful guide + Through this gloomy covert wide; 945 + And not many furlongs thence + Is your Father's residence, + Where this night are met in state + Many a friend to gratulate + His wished presence, and beside 950 + All the swains that there abide + With jigs and rural dance resort. + We shall catch them at their sport, + And our sudden coming there + Will double all their mirth and cheer. 955 + Come, let us haste; the stars grow high, + But Night sits monarch yet in the mid sky. + +The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow Town, and the President's Castle: +then come the Country Dancers; after them the Attendant Spirit, with the +Two Brothers and the Lady. + + + _Song._ + + _Spir._ Back, shepherds, back! Enough your play + Till next sun-shine holiday. + Here be, without duck or nod, 960 + Other trippings to be trod + Of lighter toes, and such court guise + As Mercury did first devise + With the mincing Dryades + On the lawns and on the leas. 965 + + This second Song presents them to their Father and Mother. + + Noble Lord and Lady bright, + I have brought ye new delight. + Here behold so goodly grown + Three fair branches of your own. + Heaven hath timely tried their youth, 970 + Their faith, their patience, and their truth, + And sent them here through hard assays + With a crown of deathless praise, + To triumph in victorious dance + O'er sensual folly and intemperance. 975 + + The dances ended, the Spirit epiloguizes. + + _Spir._ To the ocean now I fly, + And those happy climes that lie + Where day never shuts his eye, + Up in the broad fields of the sky. + There I suck the liquid air, 980 + All amidst the gardens fair + Of Hesperus, and his daughters three + That sing about the golden tree. + Along the crisped shades and bowers + Revels the spruce and jocund Spring; 985 + The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours + Thither all their bounties bring. + There eternal Summer dwells, + And west winds with musky wing + About the cedarn alleys fling 990 + Nard and cassia's balmy smells. + Iris there with humid bow + Waters the odorous banks, that blow + Flowers of more mingled hue + Than her purfled scarf can shew, 995 + And drenches with Elysian dew + (List, mortals, if your ears be true) + Beds of hyacinth and roses, + Where young Adonis oft reposes, + Waxing well of his deep wound, 1000 + In slumbers soft, and on the ground + Sadly sits the Assyrian queen. + But far above, in spangled sheen, + Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced + Holds his dear Psyche, sweet entranced 1005 + After her wandering labors long, + Till free consent the gods among + Make her his eternal bride, + And from her fair unspotted side + Two blissful twins are to be born, 1010 + Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn. + But now my task is smoothly done: + I can fly, or I can run + Quickly to the green earth's end, + Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, 1015 + And from thence can soar as soon + To the corners of the moon. + Mortals, that would follow me, + Love Virtue; she alone is free. + She can teach ye how to climb 1020 + Higher than the sphery chime; + Or, if Virtue feeble were, + Heaven itself would stoop to her. + + + + + LYCIDAS. + + +In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately drowned +in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and, by occasion, +foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy, then in their height. + + Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, + Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, + I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, + And with forced fingers rude + Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 5 + Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear + Compels me to disturb your season due; + For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, + Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. + Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew 10 + Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. + He must not float upon his watery bier + Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, + Without the meed of some melodious tear. + Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well 15 + That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; + Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. + Hence with denial vain and coy excuse: + So may some gentle Muse + With lucky words favor _my_ destined urn, 20 + And as he passes turn, + And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud! + For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, + Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill; + Together both, ere the high lawns appeared 25 + Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, + We drove a-field, and both together heard + What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, + Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, + Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 30 + Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. + Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute; + Tempered to the oaten flute + Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel + From the glad sound would not be absent long; 35 + And old Damoetas loved to hear our song. + But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone, + Now thou art gone and never must return! + Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, + With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 40 + And all their echoes, mourn. + The willows, and the hazel copses green, + Shall now no more be seen + Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. + As killing as the canker to the rose, 45 + Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, + Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, + When first the white-thorn blows; + Such Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. + Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 50 + Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? + For neither were ye playing on the steep + Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, + Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, + Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. 55 + Ay me! I fondly dream + "Had ye been there," ... for what could that have done? + What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, + The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, + Whom universal nature did lament, 60 + When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, + His gory visage down the stream was sent, + Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? + Alas! what boots it with uncessant care + To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 65 + And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? + Were it not better done, as others use, + To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, + Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair? + Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 70 + (That last infirmity of noble mind) + To scorn delights and live laborious days; + But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, + And think to burst out into sudden blaze, + Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, 75 + And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise," + Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears: + "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, + Nor in the glistering foil + Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies, 80 + But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes + And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; + As he pronounces lastly on each deed, + Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." + O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, 85 + Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, + That strain I heard was of a higher mood. + But now my oat proceeds, + And listens to the Herald of the Sea, + That came in Neptune's plea. 90 + He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds, + What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain? + And questioned every gust of rugged wings + That blows from off each beaked promontory. + They knew not of his story; 95 + And sage Hippotades their answer brings, + That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed: + The air was calm, and on the level brine + Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. + It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 100 + Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, + That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. + Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, + His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, + Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 105 + Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. + "Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?" + Last came, and last did go, + The Pilot of the Galilean Lake; + Two massy keys he bore of metals twain 110 + (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). + He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:-- + "How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, + Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake, + Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! 115 + Of other care they little reckoning make + Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, + And shove away the worthy bidden guest. + Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold + A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least 120 + That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! + What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; + And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs + Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; + The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 125 + But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, + Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; + Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw + Daily devours apace, and nothing said. + But that two-handed engine at the door 130 + Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." + Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past + That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, + And call the vales, and bid them hither cast + Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. 135 + Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use + Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, + On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, + Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, + That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, 140 + And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. + Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, + The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, + The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, + The glowing violet, 145 + The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, + With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, + And every flower that sad embroidery wears; + Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, + And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 150 + To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. + For so, to interpose a little ease, + Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. + Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas + Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; 155 + Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, + Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide + Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; + Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, + Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, 160 + Where the great Vision of the guarded mount + Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold. + Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth: + And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. + Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, 165 + For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, + Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. + So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, + And yet anon repairs his drooping head, + And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 170 + Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: + So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, + Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, + Where, other groves and other streams along, + With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 175 + And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, + In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. + There entertain him all the Saints above, + In solemn troops, and sweet societies, + That sing, and singing in their glory move, 180 + And wipe the tears forever from his eyes. + Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more; + Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, + In thy large recompense, and shalt be good + To all that wander in that perilous flood. 185 + + Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, + While the still morn went out with sandals gray: + He touched the tender stops of various quills, + With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: + And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, 190 + And now was dropt into the western bay. + At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue; + To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. + + + + + SONNETS. + + + I. + + TO THE NIGHTINGALE. + + O Nightingale that on yon bloomy spray + Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, + Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill, + While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May. + Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day, 5 + First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, + Portend success in love. O, if Jove's will + Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, + Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate + Foretell my hopeless doom, in some grove nigh; 10 + As thou from year to year hast sung too late + For my relief, yet hadst no reason why. + Whether the Muse or Love called thee his mate, + Both them I serve, and of their train am I. + + + II. + + ON HIS HAVING ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE. + + How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, + Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! + My hasting days fly on with full career, + But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. + Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 5 + That I to manhood am arrived so near; + And inward ripeness doth much less appear, + That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th. + Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, + It shall be still in strictest measure even 10 + To that same lot, however mean or high, + Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. + All is, if I have grace to use it so, + As ever in my great Task-Master's eye. + + + VIII. + + WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED TO THE CITY. + + Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms, + Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, + If deed of honor did thee ever please, + Guard them, and him within protect from harms. + He can requite thee; for he knows the charms 5 + That call fame on such gentle acts as these, + And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas, + Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. + Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower: + The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 10 + The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower + Went to the ground; and the repeated air + Of sad Electra's poet had the power + To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. + + + IX. + + TO A VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY. + + Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth + Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, + And with those few art eminently seen + That labor up the hill of heavenly Truth, + The better part with Mary and with Ruth 5 + Chosen thou hast; and they that overween, + And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, + No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. + Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends + To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, 10 + And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure + Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends + Passes to bliss at the mid-hour of night, + Hast gained thy entrance, Virgin wise, and pure. + + + X. + + TO THE LADY MARGARET LEY. + + Daughter to that good Earl, once President + Of England's Council and her Treasury, + Who lived in both unstained with gold or fee, + And left them both, more in himself content, + Till the sad breaking of that Parliament 5 + Broke him, as that dishonest victory + At Chæronea, fatal to liberty, + Killed with report that old man eloquent, + Though later born than to have known the days + Wherein your father flourished, yet by you, 10 + Madam, methinks I see him living yet: + So well your words his noble virtues praise + That all both judge you to relate them true + And to possess them, honored Margaret. + + + XIII. + + TO MR. H. LAWES ON HIS AIRS. + + Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song + First taught our English music how to span + Words with just note and accent, not to scan + With Midas' ears, committing short and long, + Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, 5 + With praise enough for Envy to look wan; + To after age thou shalt be writ the man + That with smooth air couldst humor best our tongue. + Thou honor'st Verse, and Verse must send her wing + To honor thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, 10 + That tunest their happiest lines in hymn or story. + Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher + Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, + Met in the milder shades of Purgatory. + + + XV. + + ON THE LORD GENERAL FAIRFAX, AT THE SIEGE OF COLCHESTER. + + Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings, + Filling each mouth with envy or with praise, + And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, + And rumors loud that daunt remotest kings, + Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings 5 + Victory home, though new rebellions raise + Their Hydra heads, and the false North displays + Her broken league to imp their serpent wings. + O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand + (For what can war but endless war still breed?) 10 + Till truth and right from violence be freed, + And public faith cleared from the shameful brand + Of public fraud. In vain doth Valor bleed, + While Avarice and Rapine share the land. + + + XVI. + + TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL, MAY, 1652, + + ON THE PROPOSALS OF CERTAIN MINISTERS AT THE COMMITTEE FOR + PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL. + + Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud + Not of war only, but detractions rude, + Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, + To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, + And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud 5 + Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued, + While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued, + And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud, + And Worcester's laureate wreath: yet much remains + To conquer still; Peace hath her victories 10 + No less renowned than War: new foes arise, + Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. + Help us to save free conscience from the paw + Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw. + + + XVII. + + TO SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER. + + Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, + Than whom a better senator ne'er held + The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled + The fierce Epirot and the African bold, + Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 5 + The drift of hollow states hard to be spelled; + Then to advise how war may best, upheld, + Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, + In all her equipage; besides, to know + Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, 10 + What severs each, thou hast learned, which few have done. + The bounds of either sword to thee we owe: + Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans + In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son. + + + XVIII. + + ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT. + + Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones + Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; + Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, + When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, + Forget not: in thy book record their groans 5 + Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold + Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled + Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans + The vales redoubled to the hills, and they + To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 10 + O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway + The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow + A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, + Early may fly the Babylonian woe. + + + XIX. + + ON HIS BLINDNESS. + + When I consider how my light is spent + Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, + And that one talent which is death to hide + Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent + To serve therewith my Maker, and present 5 + My true account, lest He returning chide, + "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" + I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent + That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need + Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best 10 + Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state + Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, + And post o'er land and ocean without rest; + They also serve who only stand and wait." + + + XX. + + TO MR. LAWRENCE. + + Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, + Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, + Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire + Help waste a sullen day, what may be won + From the hard season gaining? Time will run 5 + On smoother, till Favonius reinspire + The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire + The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. + What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, + Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise 10 + To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice + Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? + He who of those delights can judge, and spare + To interpose them oft, is not unwise. + + + XXI. + + TO CYRIACK SKINNER. + + Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench + Of British Themis, with no mean applause, + Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws, + Which others at their bar so often wrench, + To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench 5 + In mirth that after no repenting draws; + Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, + And what the Swede intend, and what the French. + To measure life learn thou betimes, and know + Toward solid good what leads the nearest way; 10 + For other things mild Heaven a time ordains, + And disapproves that care, though wise in show, + That with superfluous burden loads the day, + And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains. + + + XXII. + + TO THE SAME. + + Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear, + To outward view, of blemish or of spot, + Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; + Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear + Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, 5 + Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not + Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot + Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer + Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? + The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 10 + In Liberty's defence, my noble task, + Of which all Europe rings from side to side. + This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask + Content, though blind, had I no better guide. + + + XXIII. + + ON HIS DECEASED WIFE + + Methought I saw my late espoused saint + Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, + Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, + Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. + Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint 5 + Purification in the Old Law did save, + And such as yet once more I trust to have + Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, + Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. + Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight 10 + Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined + So clear as in no face with more delight. + But, oh! as to embrace me she inclined, + I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. + + + + + NOTES. + + + + + ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. + + +From his sixteenth year Milton had been wont to write freely in Latin +verse, on miscellaneous poetic themes, sometimes expressing his thoughts +on events of the day, and sometimes addressing letters to his friends on +purely personal matters. From these Latin poems, which therefore in some +sense belong to English literature, we obtain valuable insight into his +course of life and his way of thinking. What Milton wrote in foreign +languages is indispensable for the information it gives us about +himself--its content is important; but as poetry implies a fusing of +content and form into an artistic unity, if one of these elements is +foreign, the result is nondescript and cannot be ranged under the head of +English literature in the strict sense of the term. + +It is in one of Milton's own Latin pieces that we find our best +commentary on the Hymn on the Nativity. The sixth Latin Elegy is an +epistle to his intimate college friend, "Charles Diodati making a stay in +the country," the last twelve lines of which may be freely translated as +follows:-- + +But if you shall wish to know what I am doing,--if indeed you think it +worth your while to know whether I am doing anything at all,--we are +singing the peace-bringing king born of heavenly seed, and the happy ages +promised in the sacred books, and the crying of the infant God lying in a +manger under a poor roof, who dwells with his father in the realms above; +and the starry sky, and the squadrons singing on high, and the gods +suddenly driven away to their own fanes. Those gifts we have indeed given +to the birthday of Christ; that first light brought them to me at dawn. +Thee also they await sung to our native pipes; thou shalt be to me in +lieu of a judge for me to read them to. + +This means, of course, that the poet is composing a Christmas Hymn in his +native language. We must note his age at this time,--twenty-one years: he +is a student at Cambridge. The poem remains the great Christmas hymn in +our literature. "The Ode on the Nativity," says Professor Saintsbury, "is +a test of the reader's power to appreciate poetry." + +In four stanzas the poet speaks in his own person: he too must, with the +wise men from the east, bring such gifts as he has, to offer to the +Infant God. His offering is the _humble ode_ which follows. We must take +note of the change in the metric form which marks the transition from the +introduction to the ode. In the stanzas of the former the lines all have +five accents, except the last, which has six; while in the latter, four +lines have three accents each, one has four, two have five, and one has +six. Notice also the occasional hypermetric lines, such as line 47. + +In connection with Milton's Hymn, read Alfred Domett's _It was the calm +and silent night_. + + +5. For so the holy sages once did sing. See Par. Lost XII 324. + +6. our deadly forfeit should release. Compare Par. Lost III 221, and see +the idea of _releasing a forfeit_ otherwise expressed in the Merchant of +Venice IV 1 24. + +10. he wont. This is the past tense of the verb _wont_, meaning to _be +accustomed_. See the present, Par. Lost I 764, and the participle, I 332. + +15. thy sacred vein. See _vein_ in the same sense, Par. Lost VI 628. + +19. the Sun's team. Compare Comus 95, and read the story of Phaëthon in +Ovid's Metamorphoses II 106. + +24. prevent them with thy humble ode. See _prevent_ in this sense, in +Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar V 1 105, and in Psalm XXI 3. + +28. touched with hallowed fire. See Acts II 3. On the meaning of secret, +compare Par. Lost X 32. + +41. Pollute is the participle, exactly equivalent to _polluted_. + +48. the turning sphere. For poetical purposes Milton everywhere adopts +the popular astronomy of his day, which was based on the ancient, i.e. +the Ptolemaic, or geocentric system of the universe. Copernicus had +already taught the modern, heliocentric theory of the solar system, and +his innovations were not unknown to Milton, who, however, consistently +adheres to the old conceptions. In Milton, therefore, we find the earth +the centre of the visible universe, while the sun, the planets, and the +fixed stars revolve about it in their several _spheres_. These spheres +are nine in number, arranged concentrically, like the coats of an onion, +about the earth, and, if of solid matter, are to be conceived as being of +perfectly transparent crystal. Beginning with the innermost, they present +themselves in the following order: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, +Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile. In Par. Lost +III 481, the ninth sphere appears as "that crystalline sphere whose +balance weighs the trepidation talked," and the Primum Mobile, or the +first moved, becomes the tenth and outermost of the series. The last two +spheres contain no stars. + +We see, then, what we must understand by the oft-recurring _spheres_ in +Milton's poetry. In the line, _Down through the turning sphere_, however, +the singular _sphere_ is obviously used to mean the whole aggregate of +spheres composing the starry universe. + +50. With turtle wing. With the wing of a turtle-dove. + +56. The hooked chariot. War chariots sometimes had scythes, or hooks, +attached to their axles. See 2 Maccabees XIII 2. + +60. sovran. Milton always uses this form in preference to _sovereign_. + +62. the Prince of Light. Note the corresponding epithet applied to Satan, +Par. Lost X 383. + +64. The winds, with wonder whist. The word _whist_, originally an +interjection, becomes an adjective, as here and in The Tempest I 2 378. + +66. Make three syllables of Oceän, and make it rhyme with _began_. + +68. birds of calm. The birds referred to are doubtless halcyons. Dr. +Murray defines halcyon thus: "A bird of which the ancients fabled that it +bred about the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea, +and that it charmed the wind and waves so that the sea was specially calm +during the period; usually identified with a species of kingfisher, hence +a poetic name of this bird." + +71. their precious influence. The word _influence_ is originally a term +of astrology,--"a flowing in, or influent course, of the planets; their +virtue infused into, or their course working on, inferior creatures" +(Skeat, _Etym. Dict._). + +73. For all the morning light. As in Burns's "We dare be poor for a' +that," _for_ meaning in spite of. + +74. Lucifer. See Par. Lost VII 131-133. + +81. As, for _as if_. + +86. Or ere the point of dawn. The two words _or ere_ mean simply +_before_, as in Hamlet I 2 147, "A little month, or ere those shoes were +old." _The point of dawn_ imitates the French _le point du jour_. + +88. Full little thought they than. _Than_ is an ancient form of _then_, +not wholly obsolete in Milton's day. + +89. the mighty Pan. The poet takes the point of view of the shepherds and +uses the name of their special deity. + +95. by mortal finger strook. Milton uses the three participle forms, +_strook, struck_, and _strucken_. + +98. As all their souls in blissful rapture took. The verb _take_ has here +the same meaning as in Hamlet I 1 163, "no fairy takes nor witch hath +power to charm." Thus also we say, a vaccination takes. + +103. Cynthia's seat. See Penseroso 59, and Romeo and Juliet III 5 20. + +108. Make the line rhyme properly, giving to union three syllables. + +112. The helmed cherubim. See Genesis III 24. + +113. The sworded seraphim. See Isaiah VI 2-6. + +116. With unexpressive notes, meaning beyond the power of human +expression. So in Lycidas 176; Par. Lost V 595; and in As You Like It, +"the fair, the chaste, and inexpressive she." + +119. But when of old the Sons of Morning sung. See Job XXXVIII 7. + +124. the weltering waves. Compare Lycidas 13. + +125. Ring out, ye crystal spheres. See note, line 48. The elder poetry is +full of the notion that the spheres in their revolutions made music, +which human ears are too gross to hear. See Merchant of Venice V 1 50-65. + +136. speckled Vanity. The leopard that confronts Dante in Canto I of +_Hell_ is beautiful with its dappled skin, but symbolizes vain glory. + +143. like glories wearing. The adjective _like_ means nothing without a +complement, though the complement sometimes has to be supplied, as in +this instance. Fully expressed the passage would be,--_wearing glories +like those of Truth and Justice_. The _like_ in such a case as this must +be spoken with a fuller tone than when its construction is completely +expressed. + +155. those ychained in sleep. The poets, in order to gain a syllable, +long continued to use the ancient participle prefix _y_. See _yclept_, +Allegro 12. + +157. With such a horrid clang. See Exodus XIX. + +168. The Old Dragon. See Revelation XII 9. + +173. Stanzas XIX-XXVI announce the deposition and expulsion of the pagan +deities, and the ruin of the ancient religions. In accordance with his +custom of grouping selected proper names in abundance, thus giving +vividness and concreteness to his story and sonority to his verse, the +poet here illustrates the triumph of the new dispensation by citing the +names of various gods from the Roman, Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian +mythologies. + +176. Apollo, the great god, whose oracle was at Delphi, or Delphos. + +179. spell, as in Comus 853, and often. + +186. Genius. A Latin word, signifying a tutelary or guardian spirit +supposed to preside over a person or place. See Lycidas 183, and +Penseroso 154. + +191. The Lars and Lemures. In the Roman mythology these were the spirits +of dead ancestors, worshipped or propitiated in families as having power +for good or evil over the fortunes of their descendants. + +194. Affrights the flamens. The Roman flamens were the priests of +particular gods. + +195. the chill marble seems to sweat. Many instances of this phenomenon +are reported. Thus Cicero, in his _De Divinatione_, tells us: "It was +reported to the senate that it had rained blood, that the river Atratus +had even flowed with blood, and that the statues of the gods had sweat." + +197. Peor and Baälim. Syrian false gods. See Numbers XXV 3. + +199. that twice-battered god of Palestine. See I Samuel V 2. + +200. mooned Ashtaroth. See I Kings XI 33. + +203. The Lybic Hammon. "Hammon had a famous temple in Africa, where he +was adored under the symbolic figure of a ram." + +204. their wounded Thammuz. See Ezekiel VIII 14. + +205. sullen Moloch. See Par. Lost I 392-396. + +210. the furnace blue. Compare Arcades 52. + +212. Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis. Egyptian deities, the latter +figured as having the head of a dog. + +213. Nor is Osiris seen. Osiris was the principal god of the Egyptians, +brother and husband of Isis. His highest function was as god of the Nile. +He met his death at the hands of his brother Typhon, a deity of +sterility, by whom he was torn into fourteen pieces. Thereupon a general +lament was raised throughout Egypt. The bull Apis was regarded as the +visible incarnation of Osiris.--_Murray's Manual of Mythology_. + +215. the unshowered grass. Remember, this was in Egypt. + +223. his dusky eyn. This ancient plural of eye occurs several times in +Shakespeare, as in As You Like It IV 3 50. + +240. Heaven's youngest-teemed star. Compare Comus 175. + +241. Hath fixed her polished car. _Fix_ has its proper meaning, +_stopped_. The star "came and stood over where the young child was." + + + + + ON SHAKESPEARE. + + +The first edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, known as the +first folio, was published in 1623, when Milton was fifteen years old. +The second Shakespeare folio appeared in 1632. Among the commendatory +verses by various hands prefixed, after the fashion of the time, to the +latter volume, was a little piece of eight couplets, in which some then +unknown rhymer expressed his admiration of the great poet. Collecting his +poems for publication in 1645, Milton included these couplets, gave them +the date 1630, and the title _On Shakespeare_ which they have since borne +in his works. The fact that he wrote the verses two years before their +publication in the Shakespeare folio shows that he did not produce them +to order, for the special occasion. It is interesting to note that Milton +at twenty-two was an appreciative reader of Shakespeare. The lines +themselves give no hint of great poetic genius; they are a fair specimen +of the conventional, labored eulogy in vogue at the time. + + +4. star-ypointing. To make the decasyllabic verse, the poet takes the +liberty of prefixing to the present participle the _y_ which properly +belongs only to the past. + +8. a livelong monument. Instead of _livelong_, the first issue of the +lines, in the Shakespeare folio of 1632, has _lasting_. The change is +Milton's, appearing in his revision of his poems in 1645. Does it seem to +be an improvement? + +10-12. and that each heart hath ... took. The conjunction _that_ simply +repeats the _whilst_. + +11. thy unvalued book. In Hamlet I 3 19 _unvalued persons_ are persons of +no value, or of no rank. In Macbeth III 1 94 the _valued file_ is the +file that determines values or ranks. In Milton's phrase the _unvalued +book_ means the book whose merit is so great as to be beyond all +valuation: a new rank must be created for it. + +12. Those Delphic lines: lines so crowded with meaning as to seem the +utterances of an oracle. + +13. our fancy of itself bereaving: transporting us into an ecstasy, or +making us rapt with thought. + +14. Dost make _us_ marble with too much conceiving. The concentrated +attention required to penetrate Shakespeare's meaning makes statues of +us. + +15. Make the word sepulchred fit metrically into the iambic verse. + + + + + L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO. + + +The year in which the poems were composed is uncertain. Masson regards +1632 as the probable date. + +The exquisite poems to which Milton gave the Italian titles +L'Allegro,--the mirthful, or jovial, man,--and Il Penseroso,--the +melancholy, or saturnine, man,--should be regarded each as the pendant +and complement of the other, and should be read as a single whole. The +poet knew both moods, and takes both standpoints with equal grace and +heartiness. The essential idea of thus contrasting the mirthful and the +melancholy temperament he found ready to his hand. Robert Burton had +prefaced his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, published in 1621, with a series of +not unpleasing, though by no means graceful, amoebean stanzas, in which +two speakers alternately represent Melancholy, one as sweet and divine, +and the other as harsh, sour, and damned. Undoubtedly Milton knew his +Burton. But if he got his main idea from this source, he made his poems +thoroughly Miltonic by his art of visualizing in delicious pictures the +various phases of his abstract theme. The poems are wholly poetical, +equally free from obscurity of thought and from obscurity of expression. + +Each poem is prefaced with a vigorous exorcism of the spirit to which it +is hostile. This is couched in alternate three and five accent iambics, +preparing a delicious rhythmic effect when the metre changes, in the +invocation, to the octosyllable, with or without anacrusis. + +In L'Allegro we accompany the mirthful man through an entire day of his +pleasures, from early morning to late evening. The melancholy man moves +through a programme less definitely and regularly planned. The scenes of +his delights are mostly in the hours of the night: when the sun is up, he +hides himself from day's garish eye. + + + L'Allegro. + + +2. Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born. Milton follows the example of +the ancient poets in announcing the parentage of the principal beings +whom he brings upon his stage. Moreover, he uses the ancient freedom in +assigning mythical pedigrees, not only adopting no authority as a canon, +but allowing his own fancy to invent origins as suits his purpose. He +knew the Greek and Latin poets, and assumed for himself the privilege +which they exercised of shaping the myths as they pleased. We are not +therefore to seek in Milton a reproduction of any system of mythology. +_Cerberus_ was the terrible three-headed dog of Pluto. His station was at +the entrance to the lower world, or the _Stygian cave_. + +3. The Stygian cave is so called from the Styx, the infernal river, "the +flood of deadly hate." + +5. some uncouth cell. _Uncouth_ may be used here in its original sense of +_unknown_, as in Par. Lost VIII 230. + +10. In dark Cimmerian desert. The Cimmerians were a people fabled by the +ancients to live in perpetual darkness. + +12. yclept is the participle of the obsolete verb _clepe_, with the +ancient prefix _y_, as in ychained, Hymn on the Nativity 155. + +15. two sister Graces more. Hesiod names, as the three Graces, +Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia, but he makes them the daughters of Zeus +and Eurynome. + +18. The frolic wind. See _frolic_ again as an adjective, Comus 59. + +24. So buxom, blithe, and debonair. See Shakespeare's Pericles, I Gower +23. All these words are interesting to look up for etymologies and +changes of meaning. + +25-36. We readily accept and understand the personification of Jest, +Jollity, Sport, Laughter, and Liberty, but the plurals, Quips, Cranks, +Wiles, Nods, Becks, Smiles, we do not manage quite so easily, especially +in view of the couplet 29-30. + +28. Smiles may be said to be wreathed because they inwreathe the face. +See Par. Lost III 361. + +33. trip it, as you go. So in Shakespeare, "I'll queen it no inch +further; Rather than fool it so; I'll go brave it at the court, lording +it in London streets." + +41. With this line begins a series of illustrations of the _unreproved +pleasures_ which L'Allegro is going to enjoy during a day of leisure. At +first the specified pleasures or occupations are introduced by +infinitives, _to hear, to come_; but the construction soon changes, as we +shall see. The first pleasure is To hear the lark, etc. 41-44. L'Allegro +begins his day with early morning. Here we must imagine him as having +risen and gone forth where he can see the sky and can look about him to +see what is going on in the farm-yard. + + 45-46. Then to come, in spite of sorrow, + And at my window bid good-morrow. + +It must be L'Allegro himself who comes to the window, and as he is +outside, he comes to look in through the shrubbery and bid good morning +to the cottage inmates, who are now up and about their work. The +pertinency of the phrase, _in spite of sorrow_, is not intelligible. + +53. Oft listening how the hounds and horn. This "pleasure" and the +next--_sometime walking_--are introduced with present participles. There +is no interruption of grammatical consistency. + +57. Sometime walking, not unseen. See the counterpart of this line, +Penseroso 65. Todd quotes the note of Bishop Hurd,--"Happy men love +witnesses of their joy: the splenetic love solitude." + +59. against, _i.e._ toward. + +62. The clouds in thousand liveries dight. _Dight_ is the participle of +the verb _to dight_, meaning to adorn. It is still used as an archaism. + +67. And every shepherd tells his tale. This undoubtedly means _counts the +number_ of his flock. In Shakespeare we find, to _tell_ money, years, +steps, a hundred. So _tale_ often means an enumeration, a number. +L'Allegro finds the shepherds in the morning counting their sheep, not +telling stories. + +68. With this line ends the long, loose sentence that began with line 37. +We now come to a full stop, and with line 69 begin a new sentence. + +70. the landskip. A word of late origin in English, of unsettled spelling +in Milton's day. + +71. Russet lawns. In Milton, _lawn_ means field or pasture. See Lycidas +25. + +77. In this line the subject, _mine eye_, is resumed. + +80. The cynosure of neighboring eyes. In the constellation Cynosure, +usually called the Lesser Bear, is the pole-star, to which very many eyes +are directed. + +81. A new "pleasure" is introduced, with a new grammatical subject. + +83. Where Corydon and Thyrsis met. The proper names in lines 83-88 add to +the poem a pleasing touch of pastoral simplicity and cheerfulness. They +are taken from the common stock of names, which, originally devised by +the Greek idyllists for their shepherds and shepherdesses, have by the +pastoral poets of all subsequent ages been appropriated to their special +use. Corydon and Thyrsis stand for farm-laborers, Phyllis and Thestylis +for their wives or housekeepers. The day of L'Allegro has now advanced to +dinner-time. Phyllis has been preparing the frugal meal, as we could +surmise from the smoking chimney. As soon as the dinner is over the women +go out to work with the men in the harvest field. + +87. bower means simply _dwelling_. + +90. In the tanned haycock we see the hay dried and browned by the sun. + +91. The scene changes and brings yet another "pleasure." secure delight +is delight without care, _sine cura_. See Samson Agonistes 55. + +96. in the chequered shade. They danced under trees through whose foliage +the sunlight filtered. + +99. Evening comes on, and a new pleasure succeeds. Story-telling is now +in order. + +102. Sufficient information about Faery Mab can be got from Romeo and +Juliet I 4 53-95. + +103-104. She, _i.e._ one of the maids; And he,--one of the youths. The +Friar's lantern is the ignis fatuus, or will-o'-the-wisp, fabled to lead +men into dangerous marshes. + +105. A connective is lacking to make the syntax sound: the subject of +tells must be _he_. the drudging goblin. This is Robin Goodfellow, known +to readers of fairy tales. Ben Jonson makes him a character in his Court +Masque, Love Restored, where he is made to recount many of his pranks, +and says, among other things, "I am the honest plain country spirit, and +harmless, Robin Goodfellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house +clean, riddles for the country maids, and does all their other drudgery." + +109. could not end. Dr. Murray gives this among other quotations as an +instance of the verb _end_ meaning _to put into the barn, to get in._ So +in Coriolanus V 6 87. + +110. the lubber fiend. This goblin is loutish in shape and +fiendish-looking, though so good to those who treat him well. + +115. Thus done the tales. An absolute construction, imitating the Latin +ablative absolute. + +117. The country folk having gone early to bed, tired with their day's +labor, L'Allegro hastes to the city, where the pleasures of life are +prolonged further into the night. + +120. In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold. This must mean such things as +masques and revelries among the upper classes. + +122. Rain influence. See note on Hymn on the Nativity 71. + +124. What is the antecedent of whom? + +125. What ceremony is here introduced? + +128. Do not misunderstand the word mask. Its meaning becomes plain from +the context. + +131. To what pleasure does L'Allegro now betake himself? + +132. Among the dramatists of the Jacobean time Ben Jonson had especially +the repute of scholarship. The sock symbolizes comedy, as the buskin does +tragedy. Compare Il Penseroso 102. + + 133-134. Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, + Warble his native wood-notes wild. + +The couplet seems intended to convey the idea of a counterpart or +contrast to the _learned sock_ of Jonson. So considered, it is by no +means an unhappy characterization. + +135. The last of the "unreproved pleasures" that L'Allegro wishes he may +enjoy, seems not so much planned to follow the rest in sequence of time +as to accompany them and be diffused through them all. Observe the ever +in this line. The eating cares are a reminiscence of Horace's _curas +edaces_, Ode II 11 18. + +136. Lap me in soft Lydian airs. The three chief modes, or moods, of +Greek music were the _Lydian_, which was soft and pathetic; the _Dorian_, +especially adapted to war (see Par. Lost 550); and the _Phrygian_, which +was bold and vehement. + +138. the meeting soul. The soul, in its eagerness, goes forth to meet and +welcome the music. + +139. The word bout seems to point at a piece of music somewhat in the +nature of a round, or catch. + +145. That Orpheus' self may heave his head. Even Orpheus, who in his life +"drew trees, stones, and floods" by the power of his music, and who now +reposes in Elysium, would lift his head to listen to the strains that +L'Allegro would fain hear. + +149. Orpheus, with _his_ music, had succeeded in obtaining from Pluto +only a conditional release of his wife Eurydice. He was not to look back +upon her till he was quite clear of Pluto's domains. He failed to make +good the condition, and so again lost his Eurydice. + + + Il Penseroso. + +3. How little you bested. The verb _bested_ means _to avail, to be of +service_. It is not the same word that we find in Isaiah VIII 21, "hardly +bestead and hungry." + +6. fond here has its primitive meaning, _foolish_. Understand possess in +the sense in which it is used in the Bible,--"possessed with devils." + +10. Make two syllables of Morpheus. + +12. Note that while he invoked Mirth in L'Allegro under her Greek name +Euphrosyne, the poet finds no corresponding Greek designation for +Melancholy. To us Melancholy seems a name unhappily chosen. But see how +Milton applies it in line 62 below, and in Comus 546. To him the word +evidently connotes pensive meditation rather than gloomy depression. + +14. To hit the sense of human sight: to be gazed at by human eyes. + +18. Prince Memnon was a fabled Ethiopian prince, black, and celebrated +for his beauty. Recall Virgil's _nigri Memnonis arma_. + +19. that starred Ethiop queen. Cassiopeia, wife of the Ethiopian king +Cepheus, boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids, for which +act of presumption she was translated to the skies, where she became the +beautiful constellation which we know by her name. + +23. bright-haired Vesta. _Vesta_--in Greek, Hestia--"was the goddess of +the home, the guardian of family life. Her spotless purity fitted her +peculiarly to be the guardian of virgin modesty." + +30. Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove, _i.e._ before Saturn was +dethroned by Jupiter. + +33. All in a robe of darkest grain. In Par. Lost V 285, the third pair of +Raphael's wings have the color of _sky-tinctured grain_; and XI 242, his +vest is of purple livelier than "the grain of Sarra," or Tyrian purple. +This would leave us to infer that the robe of Melancholy is of a deep +rich color, so dark as to be almost black. Dr. Murray quotes from +Southey's _Thalaba_, "The ebony ... with darkness feeds its boughs of +raven grain." What objection is there to making the _grain_ in Milton's +passage _black_? + +35. And sable stole of cypress lawn. Dr. Murray thus defines _cypress +lawn_, "A light transparent material resembling cobweb lawn or crape; +like the latter it was, when black, much used for habiliments of +mourning." + +37. Come; but keep thy wonted state. Compare with this passage, L'Allegro +33. + +40. Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes. In Cymbeline I 6 51 we find the +present tense of the verb of which _rapt_ is the participle: "What, dear +Sir, thus raps you?" Do not confound this word with _rap_, meaning to +strike. + +42. Forget thyself to marble. With this compare On Shakespeare 14. + +43. With a sad leaden downward cast. So in Love's Labor's Lost IV 3 321, +"In leaden contemplation;" Othello III 4 177, "I have this while with +leaden thoughts been pressed." So also Gray in the Hymn to Adversity, +"With leaden eye that loves the ground." + +45-55. Compare the company which Il Penseroso entreats Melancholy to +bring along with her with that which L'Allegro wishes to see attending +Mirth. + +46. Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet. Only the rigid ascetic has +a spiritual ear so finely trained that he hears the celestial music. + +48. Aye, as their rhymes show, is always pronounced by the poets with the +vowel sound in _day_. + +53. the fiery-wheeled throne. See Daniel VII 9. + +54. The Cherub Contemplation. Pronounce _contemplation_ with five +syllables. It is difficult to form a distinct conception of the nature +and office of the _cherub_ of the Scriptures. Milton in many passages of +Par. Lost follows, with regard to the heavenly beings, the account given +by Dionysius the Areopagite in his Celestial Hierarchy. According to +Dionysius there were nine orders or ranks of beings in heaven, +namely,--seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, +principalities, archangels, angels. The cherubim have the special +attribute of knowledge and contemplation of divine things. + +55. hist, primarily an interjection commanding silence, becomes here a +verb. + +56. With the introduction of the nightingale comes the first intimation +of the time of day at which Il Penseroso conceives the course of his +satisfactions to begin. + +57. Everywhere else in Milton plight is used with its modern +connotations. + +59. The moon stops to hear the nightingale's song. + +65. Remember L'Allegro's _not unseen_. + +77. Up to this point Il Penseroso has been walking in the open air. + +78. removed,--remote, retired. + +87. As the Bear never sets, to outwatch him must mean to sit up all +night. + +88. With thrice great Hermes. "Hermes Trismegistos--Hermes +thrice-greatest--is the name given by the Neo-Platonists and the devotees +of mysticism and alchemy to the Egyptian god Thoth, regarded as more or +less identified with the Grecian Hermes, and as the author of all +mysterious doctrines, and especially of the secrets of alchemy." (The +_New Eng. Dicty._) To such studies the serious mediæval scholars devoted +themselves. To unsphere the spirit of Plato is to call him from the +sphere in which he abides in the other world, or, simply, to take in hand +for study his writings on immortality. + +93-96. On the four classes of demons,--Salamanders, Sylphs, Nymphs, +Gnomes,--see Pope's Rape of the Lock. These demons are in complicity with +the planets and other heavenly bodies to influence mortals. + +97-102. Thebes, Pelops' line, and the tale of Troy are the staple +subjects of the great Attic tragedians. It seems strange that the poet +finds no occasion to name Shakespeare here, as well as in L'Allegro. + +104-105. Musæus and Orpheus are semi-mythical bards, to whom is ascribed +a greatness proportioned to their obscurity. + +105-108. See note on L'Allegro, 149. + +109-115. Or call up him that left half-told. This refers to Chaucer and +to his Squieres Tale in the Canterbury Tales. It is left unfinished. Note +that Milton changes not only the spelling but the accent of the chief +character's name. Chaucer writes, "This noble king was cleped +Cambinskan." + +120. Stories in which more is meant than meets the ear refer to +allegories, like the Fairy Queen. + +121. Having thus filled the night with the occupations that he loves, Il +Penseroso now greets the morning, which he hopes to find stormy with wind +and rain. + +122. civil-suited Morn: _i.e._ Morn in the everyday habiliments of +business. + +123-124. Eos--Aurora, the Dawn--carried off several youths distinguished +for their beauty. the Attic boy is probably Cephalus, whom she stole from +his wife Procris. + +125. kerchieft in a comely cloud. _Kerchief_ is here used in its original +and proper sense. Look up its origin. + +126. The winds may be called rocking because they visibly rock the trees, +or because they shake houses. + +127. Or ushered with a shower still. The shower falls gently, without +wind. + +130. With minute-drops from off the eaves. After the rain has ceased, and +while the thatch is draining, the drops fall at regular intervals for a +time,--as it were, a drop every minute. Il Penseroso listens with +contentment to the wind, the rustling rain-fall on the leaves, and the +monotonous patter of the drops when the rain is over. + +131. The shower is past, and the sun appears, but Il Penseroso finds its +beams flaring and distasteful. He seeks covert in the dense groves. + +134. Sylvan is the god of the woods. + +135. The monumental oak is so called from its great age and size. + +140. Consciously nursing his melancholy, Il Penseroso deems the wood that +hides him a sacred place, and resents intrusion as a profanation. + +141. Hide me from day's garish eye. See Richard III. IV 4 89, Romeo and +Juliet III 2 25. + +142. While the bee with honeyed thigh. Is this good apiology? + +146. Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. Note that sleep is represented as +having feathers. These feathers, in their soft, gentle movement and in +their refreshing effect are likened to dew. The figure is a common one +with the poets. In Par. Lost IX 1044, Milton has,--"till dewy sleep +oppressed them." Cowper, Iliad II, 41, has,--"Awaking from thy dewy +slumbers." + +148. his refers to the _dewy-feathered sleep_. Il Penseroso asks that a +strange, mysterious dream, hovering close by the wings of sleep, and +lightly pictured in a succession of vivid forms, may be laid on his +eye-lids. + +155-166. The word studious in line 156 determines that the passage refers +to college life and not to church attendance. The old English colleges +have their cloisters, and these have much the same architectural features +as do churches. + +157. embowed means vaulted, or bent like a _bow_. + +158. massy-proof: massive and proof against all failure to support their +load. + +159. And storied windows richly dight. Compare L'Allegro, 62. + +170. The best possible comment on this use of the verb spell is Milton's +own language, Par. Regained IV 382, where Satan, addressing the Son of +God, thus speaks:-- + + Now, contrary, if I read aught in Heaven, + Or Heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars + Voluminous, or single characters + In their conjunction met, give me to spell, + Sorrows and labors, opposition, hate, + Attends thee; scorns, reproaches, injuries, + Violence and stripes, and, lastly, cruel death. + +Il Penseroso's aspiration is that as an astrologer he may learn the +influence of every star and that he may come to know the virtue of every +herb. + + + + + ARCADES. + + +The noble persons of the family of the Countess Dowager of Derby were +fortunate enough to obtain the services of the poet John Milton to aid in +the composition of a mask, which they presented to her ladyship at her +residence in the country. Arcades--the Arcadians--is Milton's +contribution to this performance. In date the poem precedes Comus, which +is known to have been composed in 1634. + +On the meaning of the term _mask_, as applied to a dramatic form, see +introductory note on Comus. + + +20. Latona (or Leto) was the mother of Apollo and Diana by Zeus. + +21. the towered Cybele is Virgil's Berecyntia Mater, the Phrygian mother, +who, wearing her mural crown, drives in her chariot through the cities of +Phrygia. She was conceived as one of the very oldest deities, and as +mother of a hundred gods. See Æneid VI 785. + +28. Of famous Arcady ye are. Arcadia, in the Peloponnesus, was peculiarly +the home of music and song, especially among the shepherds. See Virgil, +Eclogue VII 4-5. + +30. Divine Alpheus. See note on Lycidas 132. + +46. curl the grove: bestow upon the grove dense, crisp foliage. + +47. With ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove. The grove is +intersected with a maze of circling and purposeless paths. + +49. noisome: full of annoyance, injurious. See Par. Lost XI 478. blasting +vapors. See note on Comus 640. + +51. thwarting thunder blue. Compare Julius Cæsar I 3 50, "the cross blue +lightning." + +52. the cross dire-looking planet. Cross means _adverse, unfavorable_. +See note on _influence_, Hymn on the Nativity 71. + +54. evening gray. See note on Lycidas 187. + +60. murmurs. Compare Comus 526. + +63. the celestial Sirens' harmony. The Sirens are here advanced to a high +function and given a new Epithet. Compare Comus 253. + +64. the nine infolded spheres. See note on Hymn on Nativity 48. + +65-66. See note on Lycidas 75. + +69. the daughters of Necessity: the Fates. + +72-73. which none can hear Of human mould with gross unpurged ear. +Compare Merchant of Venice V 1 64. + +87. touch the warbled string: the string that is accompanied with the +voice. See Il Penseroso 106. + +97. Ladon, a river of Arcadia, flowing into the Alpheus. + +98. Lycæus and Cyllene, mountains of Arcadia. + +100. Erymanth. Erymanthus is a range of mountains separating Arcadia from +Achaia and Elis. + +102. Mænalus, another mountain of Arcadia. + +106. Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were. Syrinx was an Arcadian +nymph, who, being pursued by Pan, threw herself into the Ladon, where she +was metamorphosed into a reed, of which the shepherds thereafter made +their pipes. + + + + + AT A SOLEMN MUSIC. + + +The poet listens to what in the phrase of his time is a _solemn music_, +but which we should name a sacred concert. The poem is unalloyed lyric, +expressing the rapture to which the music has lifted his soul. We must +remember that Milton was himself an amateur musician, and in his days of +darkness found habitual diversion at his organ. Indications of a +susceptible and appreciative ear for musical harmony are frequent +throughout the poems. + + +7. the sapphire-colored throne. See Ezekiel I 26. + +27. consort is the word from which we derive our _concert_. + + + + + COMUS. + + +During the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., the _mask_ was +one of the most popular forms of dramatic entertainment. Having a +function and a character peculiar to itself, it flourished side by side +with the regular plays of the theatrical stage, and gave large scope to +the genius of poets, composers, and scenic artists. + +The mask was usually designed to grace some important occasion, in which +members of the upper classes of society, or even royal personages, were +concerned. When the occasion called for particularly brilliant display, +and had been long foreseen, the preparations for it would involve immense +outlays for costumes, theatrical machinery, for new music, and for a +libretto by a play-writer of the greatest note. When the mask was purely +a private one, like Arcades and Comus, it was all the fashion for the +gentle youths and maidens, for gentlemen and ladies of the highest rank, +to take upon themselves the parts of the drama, to rehearse them +assiduously, and finally to enact them on the private stage or on the +lawn in the presence of a select audience. + +The mask thus differentiated itself from the stage play in that it was +not given for the pecuniary behoof of a company of actors, but +represented rather expenditure for the simple purpose of producing grand +effects. To act in a mask was an honor, when common players were social +outcasts. The mask was got up for the occasion, and was not intended to +keep the boards and attract a paying public. When the august ceremonial +was over, the poet had his manuscript, to increase the bulk of his works, +and the composer had his score, to furnish airs that might be played and +sung in drawing-rooms if they had the good fortune to be popular. + +Such was the origin of the poem which Milton, in all the editions +published during his lifetime, entitled simply "A Maske presented at +Ludlow Castle, 1634," but which editors since his day have agreed to name +Comus. + +The occasion of the poem was the coming of the Earl of Bridgewater to +Ludlow Castle, to enter upon his official residence there as Lord +President of Wales. The person chiefly concerned in the scenic, musical, +and histrionic preparations of the mask was Milton's esteemed friend, the +most accomplished musical composer of the day, Henry Lawes. Lawes +composed the music and arranged the stage business. He seems to have +taken upon himself the part of the Attendant Spirit. Lawes knew to whom +to apply for the all-important matter of the book, the words, or the +poetry, of the piece, for he had learned to know Milton's qualifications +as a mask-poet in the fragment which we have under the name _Arcades_. +With good music even for commonplace lyric verse, and with sprightly +declamation even of conventional dialogue, the thing, as we know from +modern instances, might have been carried off by gorgeous costumes and +shrewdly devised scenic effects. Most of the masks of the time fell at +once into oblivion. But Lawes had secured for his poet John Milton; and +the consequence thereof is that the Earl of Bridgewater is now chiefly +heard of because at Ludlow Castle there was enacted, in the form of a +mask written by Milton, a drama which is still read and reread by every +English-speaking person who reads any serious poetry, though Ludlow +Castle has long been a venerable ruin. + +For his plot, the poet feigned that the young children of the earl, two +sons and a daughter, in coming to Ludlow, had to pass unattended through +a forest, in which the boys became separated from the girl and she fell +into the hands of the enchanter Comus. The Attendant Spirit appears to +the youths with his magic herb, and with the further assistance of the +water-nymph Sabrina, at last makes all right, and the children are +restored to their parents in the midst of festive rejoicing. + +The poem is dramatic, because it is acted and spoken or sung in character +by its persons. It is allegorical, because it inculcates a moral, and +more is meant than meets the ear. In parts it is pastoral, both because +the chief personage appears in the guise of a shepherd, and because its +motive largely depends on the superstitions and traditions of simple, +ignorant folk. In the longer speeches, where events are narrated with +some fulness, it becomes epic. Lastly, in its songs, in the octosyllables +of the magician, and in the adjuration and the thanking of Sabrina, it is +lyric. With iambic pentameter as the basis of the dialogue, the poet +varies his measures as Shakespeare does his, and with very similar ends +in view. + +The name _Comus_ Milton found ready to his hand. As a common noun, the +Greek word _comus_ signifies carousal,--wassail. In the later classic +period it had become a proper name, standing for a personification of +nocturnal revelry, and a god Comus was frequently depicted on vases and +in mural paintings. Philostratus, in his _Ikones_,--or _Pictures_,--gives +an interesting description of a painting of this god. See Encyclopædia +Britannica, article _Comus_. Ben Jonson, in his mask, _Pleasure +Reconciled to Virtue_, played in 1619, presents a Comus as "the god of +cheer, or the belly, riding in triumph, his head crowned with roses and +other flowers, his hair curled." The character and the name were the +common property of mask-writers. + +The great distinction of Comus is its beauty, maintained at height +through a thousand lines of supremely perfect verse. Greatly dramatic it +of course is not. It yields its meaning to the most cursory reading; it +has no mystery. It is simply beautiful, with a sustained beauty elsewhere +unparalleled. + + +The following letter of Sir Henry Wotton to the Author deserves to be +read both for its engaging style as a piece of English prose and for its +exquisite characterization of Comus. Wotton was a versatile scholar, +diplomat, and courtier, seventy years old at the time of this letter, +with a reputation as a kindly and appreciative literary critic. He was +now residing at Eton College, where he held the office of Provost. +Milton, thirty years of age, the first edition of his Comus recently +published anonymously, had good cause for elation over such a testimonial +from such a source. + + "From the College, this 13 of April, 1638. + +"Sir, + +"It was a special favour when you lately bestowed upon me here the first +taste of your acquaintance, though no longer than to make me know that I +wanted more time to value it and to enjoy it rightly; and, in truth, if I +could then have imagined your farther stay in these parts, which I +understood afterwards by Mr. H., I would have been bold, in our vulgar +phrase, to mend my draught (for you left me with an extreme thirst), and +to have begged your conversation again, jointly with your said learned +friend, over a poor meal or two, that we might have banded together some +good Authors of the ancient time; among which I observed you to have been +familiar. + +"Since your going, you have charged me with new obligations, both for a +very kind letter from you dated the 6th of this month, and for a dainty +piece of entertainment which came therewith. Wherein I should much +commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a +certain Doric delicacy in your Songs and Odes, whereunto I must plainly +confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language: _Ipsa +mollities_. But I must not omit to tell you that I now only owe you +thanks for intimating unto me (how modestly soever) the true artificer. +For the work itself I had viewed some good while before with singular +delight; having received it from our common friend Mr. R., in the very +close of the late R.'s Poems, printed at Oxford: whereunto it was added +(as I now suppose) that the accessory might help out the principal, +according to the art of Stationers, and to leave the reader _con la bocca +dolce_. + +"Now, Sir, concerning your travels; wherein I may challenge a little more +privilege of discourse with you. I suppose you will not blanch Paris in +your way: therefore I have been bold to trouble you with a few lines to +Mr. M. B., whom you shall easily find attending the young Lord S. as his +governor; and you may surely receive from him good directions for the +shaping of your farther journey into Italy where he did reside, by my +choice, some time for the King, after mine own recess from Venice. + +"I should think that your best line will be through the whole length of +France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa; whence the passage into +Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend barge. I hasten, as you do, to +Florence or Siena, the rather to tell you a short story, from the +interest you have given me in your safety. + +"At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman +courtier in dangerous times; having been steward to the Duca di Pagliano, +who with all his family were strangled, save this only man that escaped +by foresight of the tempest. With him I had often much chat of those +affairs, into which he took pleasure to look back from his native +harbour; and at my departure toward Rome (which had been the centre of +his experience), I had won his confidence enough to beg his advice how I +might carry myself there without offence of others or of mine own +conscience. '_Signor Arrigo mio_,' says he, '_I pensieri stretti ed il +viso sciolto_ will go safely over the whole world.' Of which Delphian +oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no commentary; +and therefore, Sir, I will commit you, with it, to the best of all +securities, God's dear love, remaining + +"Your friend, as much to command as any of longer date, + + "Henry Wotton." + + _Postscript._ + +"Sir: I have expressly sent this my footboy to prevent your departure +without some acknowledgment from me of the receipt of your obliging +letter; having myself through some business, I know not how, neglected +the ordinary conveyance. In any part where I shall understand you fixed, +I shall be glad and diligent to entertain you with home-novelties, even +for some fomentation of our friendship, too soon interrupted in the +cradle." + + +The Latin phrase, _ipsa mollities_, may be translated,--it is the very +perfection of delicacy. The Italian words below mean,--My dear Henry, +thoughts close, face open. + + +1. Before the starry threshold of Jove's court. The attendant spirit not +only announces himself as a dweller in heaven, but he specifies his +particular function among the celestials: he is doorkeeper in the house +of God. + +3. insphered. Compare Il Penseroso 88. + +7. Confined and pestered. _Pester_ has its primitive meaning, to clog or +encumber. In this pinfold here. _Pinfold_ is probably not connected with +the verb to pen, but is a shortened form of poundfold, and means, +literally, an enclosure for stray cattle. + +10. After this mortal change: after this life on earth, which is subject +to death. + +11. Amongst the enthroned gods. Make but two syllables of _enthroned_, +and accent the first. + +The long sentence ending with line 11 is very loose in construction: the +_and_ in line 7 is a coördinate conjunction, but does not connect +coördinate elements. + +13. To lay their just hands on that golden key. Compare Lycidas 110. + +16. these pure ambrosial weeds. Ambrosial has its proper +meaning,--pertaining to the immortals. + +20. by lot 'twixt high and nether Jove. Neptune drew lots with Jupiter +and Pluto. To Jupiter fell the region of the upper air, to Pluto the +lower world, and to Neptune the sea. The ancient poets sometimes spoke of +Jupiter and Pluto as the upper and the lower Jove. + +25. By course commits to several government: in due order he assigns the +islands to his tributaries, giving them an island apiece. + +27. But this Isle is so large that he has to divide it. + +29. Consider quarters to mean nothing more than divides. his blue-haired +deities. The epithet is conventional, taken from the Greek poets, and +probably has no special significance in this passage. + +31. A noble Peer. This connects the poem with actual persons and +announces its occasion. The noble peer is the Earl of Bridgewater, and +the event which is to be celebrated is his appointment to the +Vice-royalty of Wales. + +33. The old and haughty nation are the Welsh. + +34. his fair offspring are two sons and a daughter, who are to play the +parts of the Two Brothers and the Lady in the mask. + +37. the perplexed paths of this drear wood. Compare Par. Lost IV 176. + +41. sovran. See note on Hymn on the Nativity 60. + +45. in hall or bower. Hall and bower are conventionally coupled by the +poets to signify the dwellings, respectively, of the gentry and the +laboring classes. + +46. The transformation by Bacchus of the treacherous Tuscan sailors into +dolphins belongs to the established myths of that god. But Milton +exercises his right as a poet to add to the classic story whatever suits +his purposes. + +48. After the Tuscan mariners transformed; a Latinism, meaning, after the +transformation of the Tuscan mariners. + +50. fell: chanced to land. + +For the story of Circe, see the Odyssey X. + +58. Understand that no such distinct character as Comus belongs to the +received mythology. Milton is a myth-maker. + +59. frolic is used as an adjective, as in L'Allegro 18. + +60. the Celtic and Iberian fields. The god traversed Gaul and Spain, on +his way to Britain. + +61. ominous: abounding in mysterious signs of danger. + +65. His orient liquor. See line 673 of this poem. + +72. Note that only the countenance is changed. + +87. Well knows to still the wild winds. The poem moves throughout in the +realm of romance. The swain Thyrsis is in his own character a +practitioner of magic. + +88. nor of less faith. Thyrsis has just been described as a person of +great skill. + +90. Likeliest: most likely to be. + +93. The transition from the stately mood of the Attendant Spirit's +exordium to the noisy exhilaration of Comus is marked by appropriate +changes in the verse. Comus speaks in a lyric strain, and his tone is +exultant. When he comes to serious business, in line 145, he also employs +blank-verse. The lyric lines, 93-144, rhyme in couplets, and vary in +length, most of them having four accents, while some have five. The +four-accent lines vary between seven and eight syllables, many of them +dropping the initial light syllable, or anakrusis (Auftakt). These +seven-syllable lines have a trochaic effect, but are to be scanned as +iambic, the standard rhythm of the poem. The star that bids the shepherd +fold. So Collins, in his ode To Evening,--"For when thy folding-star +arising shows His paly circlet." See also Measure for Measure IV 2 218. + +96. doth allay: doth cool. + +97. The epithet steep is applied to the ocean, though really it is the +course of the downward-moving sun that is steep. + +99-101. Milton uses pole, as the poets were wont to do, to mean the sky; +and the passage means,--the sun, moving about the earth in his oblique +course, now shines upon that part of the heavens which, when it is +daylight to us, is in shadow. + +105. with rosy twine; with twined, or wreathed, roses. + +108-109. Advice ... Age ... Severity. For these abstract terms substitute +their concretes. + +110. their grave saws. So Hamlet I 5 100, "all saws of books." + +116. in wavering morrice. See M. N. Dream II 1 98; All's Well II 2 25. + +118. the dapper elves. _Dapper_ is akin to the German _tapfer_, but with +a very different connotation. + +124. Love: the Latin Amor, the Greek Eros, and our Cupid. + +129. Dark-veiled Cotytto was a Thracian goddess, whose worship was +connected with licentious frivolity. + +133. makes one blot of all the air. Compare line 204 of this poem. + +135. thou ridest with Hecat'. _Hecate_ was a goddess of the lower world, +mistress of witchcraft and the black arts. + +139. The nice Morn. _Nice_ is used in a disparaging sense, meaning over +particular, minutely critical. + +140. From her cabined loop-hole peep. As if morn dwelt in a cabin and +clandestinely peeped from a small window. + +141. descry must here mean reveal. + +144. In a light fantastic round. Recall L'Allegro 34. Comus and his crew +are now dancing. + +147. shrouds: hiding-places. See the verb, line 316. + +151. my wily trains. _Trains_ are tricks, as in Macbeth IV 3 118. + +154. The air is spongy because it absorbs his magic dust. + +155. blear, usually applied to eyes, here refers to the effect of seeing +objects with blear eyes. + +174. the loose unlettered hinds. The hinds are farm-servants, usually +with an implication of rudeness and rusticity, and they are loose because +unrestrained in speech and act by considerations of propriety. + +177. amiss: in wrong or unseemly ways. + +178. swilled is a very contemptuous word. + +179. wassailers. See Macbeth I 7 64. The word has an interesting +etymology. + +188. the grey-hooded Even. Milton is fond of applying the epithet _gray_ +to the evening and the dawn. See Par. Lost IV 598, Lycidas 187. + +189. Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed. The votarist is one who has +made a vow. In this case he goes on a pilgrimage, carrying a palm branch, +and wearing the pilgrim garb. + +203. the tumult of loud mirth was rife. As to the meaning of _rife_ +compare Sam. Ag. 866 and Par. Lost I 650. + +204. Yet nought but single darkness do I find. The darkness is unbroken +by any ray of light. + +210. may startle well, but not astound. _Astound_ is a strong word. See +Par. Lost I 281. + +212. a strong siding champion: a champion who sides with the virtuous +mind. + +222. her silver lining. Note Milton's avoidance of the possessive _its_. +In all his verse he uses _its_ but three times. + +231. Within thy airy shell. The _airy shell_ in which Echo lives must be +the "hollow round" of the atmosphere. Compare Hymn on the Nativity +100-103. + +232. The Meander is the river of Asia Minor, famous for its windings. + +233-237. The mention of the nightingale and Narcissus in this passage +suggests that it may be a reminiscence of the chorus in the Oedipus +Coloneus,--"Of this land of goodly steeds, O stranger." + +237. Echo's passion for the beautiful Narcissus was not requited, and she +pined away till she became a mere voice, which she could not utter till +she was spoken to. + +241. Daughter of the Sphere: daughter of the air, which forms a hollow +sphere about the earth. + +243. And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies: by echoing back +the music of the spheres. + +249-252. Even darkness smiled, as if acknowledging itself agreeably +caressed by the strains of the lady's song. + +251. At every fall. _Fall_, as a musical term, is "a sinking down or +lowering of the note or voice; cadence" (New Eng. Dict.). + +253. the Sirens dwelt on an island near Sicily, and by their sweet song +allured mariners to destruction. See Odyssey XII. + +254. the Naiades were nymphs attendant on Circe and the Sirens. + +257. And lap it in Elysium. Compare L'Allegro 136. + +257-259. Scylla and Charybdis were dangerous rocks and whirlpools on +opposite sides of the strait of Messina. They were personified as cruel +sea-monsters. + +260. Yet they: Circe and the Sirens. + +267. Unless the goddess. Supply _thou art_. + +273. extreme shift: a pressing necessity of devising some expedient. + +289. Were they of manly prime or youthful bloom? Were they in the prime +of adult manhood, or in the bloom of youth? + +277-290. These fourteen lines are an instance of "stichomythia, or +conversation in alternate lines, which was always popular on the Attic +stage. This scheme of versification is used chiefly in excited +discussions, where the speakers are hurried along by the eagerness of +their feelings."--Haigh, _The Tragic Drama of the Greeks_. + +292. An ox in traces would now be a rare sight. + +294. a green mantling vine. See Par. Lost IV 258. + +299. gay creatures of the element: creatures of the air,--supernatural +beings. + +301. And play i' the plighted clouds. Probably the poet means the +_plaited_, or _pleated_, clouds, conceiving the clouds as appearing +folded together. I was awe-strook. See Hymn on the Nativity 95. + +316. Or shroud within these limits. _Shroud_ as a noun we saw above, line +147. + +318. From her thatched pallet rouse. The lark builds on the ground, +seeking a spot protected by overarching stems of grass or grain, which +may be called a natural thatch; and if this protection is destroyed by +mowers or reapers, the bird will at once take pains to build a roof or +thatch over the nest, completely covering it, and for a door will make an +opening on the side. + +325. where it first was named. The derivation of the words _courteous_ +and _courtesy_ from _court_ is obvious. + +327. Less warranted than this, or less secure. The lady says that she +cannot be in any place less guaranteed than this against evil, and that +she cannot anywhere be less free from anxiety. Her situation she +conceives to be as bad as it can be. + +329. square my trial To my proportioned strength: make my trial +proportionate to my strength. + +332. That wont'st to love. _Wont'st_, in the present tense, means, as we +say, art wont. + +333. Stoop thy pale visage. Stoop is thus used, transitively, Richard II. +III 1 19, "myself ... have stooped my neck." + +334. And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here. _Chaos_, "the formless void +of primordial matter," is personified by Milton here and, much more +conspicuously, in Par. Lost III. + +338. a rush-candle: a candle made with a rush for a wick,--the cheapest +kind of light. from the wicker hole Of some clay habitation. Imagine a +hut whose walls are made of wattled twigs plastered with clay. This clay +when dry is apt to fall off in spots, leaving holes through which the +light within can be seen from without. A wicker hole is a hole in the +wicker-work, perhaps made intentionally, to serve as a window. + +341-342. The star of Arcady is the constellation of the Greater Bear, and +the Tyrian Cynosure that of the Lesser Bear. Stars in these +constellations served as guides to Greek and Tyrian mariners. + +345. Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops. Compare Collins's Ode to +Evening,--_If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song_. The shepherds of +the Greek idylls made their musical pipes of reeds or oat-straws, and the +oat has therefore been adopted by the pastoral poetry of all ages. + +349. innumerous boughs. Compare Par. Lost VII 455. + +358. Of savage hunger, or of savage heat: of hungry savages, or of +lustful savages. + +361. grant they be so: grant that they are real evils. + +365. Make four syllables of delusion. + +366. I do not think my sister so to seek: I do not think she has her +seeking, or learning, still to do: I do not think her so inexperienced. + +373-375. Is this practical doctrine? + +377. Make five syllables of Contemplation. + +380. Were all to-ruffled. The particle _to_--Anglo Saxon _tô_, Modern +German _zer_--has disappeared from Modern English. In Old English it was +often used with the force of the Latin _dis_. So still in Chaucer, +_to-bete, to-cleve, to-rende_, and many others. + +386. affects: likes, has an affection for. + +390. weeds, as in line 84. + +393. the fair Hesperian tree. See line 983. + +394. had need the guard. An elliptical expression. _Need_ is a noun, but +is treated as if it were a verb. + +395. The dragon Ladon was not able to defend the apples of Hesperides +against Hercules. + +401. will wink on Opportunity: will fail to see its chance. + +404. it recks me not. The verb is thus used, impersonally, also in +Lycidas 122. + +407. The line has two hypermetric syllables, one after the third foot, +and one at the end. + +413. squint suspicion. An epithet applicable only to a physical infirmity +is applied to a mental act. + +422. quivered: bearing a quiver. + +423. unharbored: furnishing no shelter. + +424. Infamous hills. Accent _infamous_ as we do now and as Milton does +elsewhere. Verses thus beginning with trochees are common. + +429. Look up the origin of the word grots. + +430. unblenched: unstartled. + +434. Blue meagre hag. The _hag_ has the livid hue of hunger. + +436. swart faery of the mine. A malignant demon dwelling under ground,--a +gnome. + +441. the huntress Dian. The powerful goddess Diana, or Artemis, twin +sister of Apollo, was figured bearing a bow and arrows. + +448. wise Minerva. Minerva, or Pallas Athene, is usually represented as +wearing on her breast the ægis with a border of snakes and the Gorgon's +head in the centre. + +460-462. Note the different modes in begin and turns, where we should +look for similar constructions. + +487. The ellipsis of _we had_ is readily supplied. Draw and stand are +infinitives. + +494. Thyrsis, a stock shepherd-name. The spirit henceforth appears to his +fellow-actors in the mask as the shepherd with whom they are familiar. + +495-512. These lines express sudden emotion, and approximate lyric in +character. Hence the rhyme. + +508. How chance she is not. Supply the ellipsis. + +517. Chimeras is here used vaguely in the plural to mean dangerous +monsters. + +526. With many murmurs mixed. The enchanter spoke or sang forms of +incantation over his mixing and brewing. Recall Macbeth. + +529. The word mintage has an interesting history. The human countenance +is conceived as an imprint, like the characters on a coin. + +530. Charactered in the face. The _noun character_ Milton pronounces with +accent on the first syllable, as does Shakespeare. Probably he also +agrees with Shakespeare in pronouncing the _verb_ with the accent on the +second syllable, as this verse suggests. + +531. crofts. The word is still in use in England, meaning a small farm. + +540. by then the chewing flocks: by the time when, etc. + +547. To meditate my rural minstrelsy: to play on my shepherd-pipe and to +sing. To meditate the muse is a standard expression of the pastoral +poets. See Lycidas 66. + +552. What do we know was the cause of this unusual stop of sudden +silence? + +553-554. The cessation of the din gave to the steeds of sleep, and to +people who were trying to sleep, relief from annoyance. + +557-560. Be sure you understand the figure. + +560. Still, in its very frequent sense, _always_. + +562. Under the ribs of Death: in a skeleton. + +575. such two; describing them. + +586. Shall be unsaid for me: it is not necessary for me to make any +change in my opinion to make it harmonize with this new aspect of +affairs. + +595. Gathered like scum, and settled to itself. The two metaphors thus +combined make a rather strange mixture. + +598. The pillared firmament. By the _firmament_ is usually understood the +sphere of the fixed stars. How to introduce the conception of _pillars_ +is not clear. + +604. Acheron. See Par. Lost II 578. + +605. The Harpies were monstrous birds with women's heads. Their doings +are described Æneid III. The Hydra was a monster serpent with a hundred +heads. + +607. his purchase: his acquisition. + +610. I love thy courage yet, though thou hast spoken most unwisely. + +611. can do thee little stead: can avail thee but little. + +617. utmost shifts: most carefully devised precautions. + +620. Of small regard to see to: of very insignificant appearance. + +621. A virtuous plant is a plant which has virtues, i.e. powers or +qualities. + +624. Which when I did. The modern English has lost the power of beginning +a sentence thus, with two relatives. + +626. scrip, a word in no way connected with _script_. + +627. And show me simples of a thousand names. Compare Hamlet IV 7 145, +"no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under +the moon." + +634. Unknown and like esteemed: neither known nor esteemed. + +635. Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon. See 2 Henry VI. IV 2 +195,--"Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon," and Hamlet IV 5 +26,--"By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal shoon." + +636. The story of Hermes' giving Ulysses the Moly read in Odyssey X. +"Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from +the ground, and he showed me the growth thereof. It was black at the +root, but the flower was like to milk. Moly the gods call it, but it is +hard for mortal men to dig; howbeit with the gods all things are +possible." + +638. He called it Hæmony. _Hæmony_ is a nonce-word of Milton's own +coining. He may have derived it from a Greek word meaning _skilful_ or +from another meaning _blood_. + +640. mildew blast, or damp. _Blast_ is defined by Dr. Murray: "A sudden +infection destructive to vegetable or animal life (formerly attributed to +the blowing or breath of some malignant power, foul air, etc.)"; and +_damp_: "An exhalation, a vapor or gas, of a noxious kind." + +641. Or ghastly Furies' apparition: or the appearance of terrifying +ghosts. + +646. Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells. _Lime_ was a viscous +substance, spread upon the twigs of trees and bushes to entangle the feet +of birds. The figure is frequent in Shakespeare. See Hamlet III 3 68, "O +limed soul, that, struggling to be free, Art more engaged." + +657. apace: quickly. + +In the stage directions, goes about means, makes a movement. + +661. as Daphne was, Root-bound, that fled Apollo. The great god, Apollo, +pursuing the nymph Daphne, Diana saved her by transforming her into a +laurel tree. + +672. this cordial julep. _Julep_ is a word of Persian origin, meaning +rose-water. Note the poet's skill in culling words of delicious sound. + +675. Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone In Egypt gave to +Jove-born Helena. See Odyssey IV: "Then Helen, daughter of Zeus, cast a +drug into the wine whereof they drank, a drug to lull all pain and anger, +and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow.... Medicines of such virtue and +so helpful had the daughter of Zeus, which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, +had given her, a woman of Egypt." + +685. the unexempt condition: the condition from which no one is exempt. + +695. These oughly-headed monsters. Perhaps by this peculiar spelling, +_oughly_, Milton meant to add to the word _ugly_ a higher degree of +ugliness. + +698. With vizored falsehood: falsehood with its vizor, or face-piece, +down, to conceal its identity. + +700. With liquorish baits. _Liquorish_, now usually spelled _lickerish_, +is allied to _lecherous_, and has no connection with _liquor_ or with +_liquorice_. + +703. The goodness of the gift lies in the intention of the giver. + +707. those budge doctors of the stoic fur. _Budge_ is defined by Dr. +Murray: "Solemn in demeanor, important-looking, pompous, stiff, formal." +Cowper, in his poem Conversation, has the couplet: "The solemn fop; +significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge." _A +doctor of the Stoic fur_ is a teacher of the Stoic philosophy, who wears +a gown of the fur to which his degree of doctor entitles him. + +708. fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub: teach doctrines learned +from the Cynic Diogenes, who is reputed to have lived in a tub. + +719. hutched: stowed or laid away, as in a chest or hutch. + +721. pulse; conceived as the simplest kind of food. + +722. frieze; to be pronounced _freeze_. + +724. and yet: and what is yet more. + +728. Who refers back to Nature. + +734. they below: the people of the lower world. + +737. coy. See Lycidas 18. cozened. See Merchant of Venice II 9 38. + +744. It refers back to beauty. + +748. homely; in the modern disparaging sense. + +750. grain: color. + +751. To ply, or make, a sampler, as a proof of her skill with the needle, +was, until very modern times, the duty of every young girl. The old +samplers are now precious heirlooms in families. to tease the huswife's +wool. To _tease wool_, or to card it, was to use the teasle, or a card, +to prepare it for spinning. Carding and spinning were common duties of +the huswife and her daughters. + +753. In what respect can tresses be said to be like the morn? + +760. when vice can bolt her arguments. There are two verbs, spelled +alike, _bolt_. One means to sift, and is used often of arguments and +reasonings. To bolt arguments is to construct them with logical care and +precision. The other _bolt_ means to shoot forth or blurt out. We may +take our choice of the two words. + +773. How is the line to be scanned? + +780. Or have I said enow? In the edition of Comus published in 1645 this +passage reads, _Or have I said enough?_ In the edition of 1673, the +latest that he revised, Milton changed _enough_ to _enow_. Grammatically, +_enough_ is the better form, as the Elizabethan usage favored _enough_ +for the form of the adjective with singular nouns and for the adverb, and +_enow_ as the adjective with plurals. It would seem that the poet must +have had some motive of euphony for the change he made. + +788. thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know. A Latinism: _dignus es +qui non cognoscas_. + +793. the uncontrolled worth Of this pure cause: the invincible power +inherent in the cause by virtue of its nature. + +804. Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus To some of Saturn's crew: +pronounces sentence upon his foes, condemning them to the punishments +named. _Erebus_--Darkness--is one of the numerous names of the lower +world, the kingdom of Pluto. + +808. the canon laws: the fundamental laws, or the Constitution. Canon +law, generally speaking, is ecclesiastical law, or the law governing the +church. + +817. And backward mutters of dissevering power. The "many murmurs" with +which his incantations have been mixed must be spoken backward in order +to undo their effect. This backward repetition of the charm has the power +to break the spell which the charm has wrought. + +822. Meliboeus is yet another of the stock names of pastoral poetry. + +823. The soothest shepherd. The ancient adjective _sooth_ means +essentially nothing more than _true_. + +826. Sabrina is her name. The story of Sabrina is told by Geoffrey of +Monmouth, whose history is included in the volume of Bohn's Antiquarian +Library, entitled _Six Old English Chronicles_. The book is easily +accessible. + +827. Whilom is derived from the dative plural _hwílum_ of the Old English +noun _hwíl_, and originally meant _at times_. + +831. What does Sabrina do in this line? + +835. aged Nereus was one of the numerous Greek deities of the water. He +and his wife Doris had fifty or a hundred daughters, who are called +Nereids. + +838. In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel. The _nectar_ of the gods, +which we usually think of as their drink, was also applied to other +purposes, as when Thetis anoints with it the body of Patroclus, to +prevent decay. _Asphodel_ is a flower in our actual flora; but in the +poets Asphodel is an immortal flower growing abundantly in the meadows of +Elysium. + +840. ambrosial here means, _conferring immortality_. + +845. Helping all urchin blasts; _i.e._ helping the victims of the blasts +against their baleful influence. See note on line 640. See Merry Wives of +Windsor IV 4 49. + +851. The word daffodil is directly derived from asphodel, with a _d_ +unaccountably prefixed. The English daffodil is the narcissus. + +858. adjuring: charging or entreating solemnly and earnestly, as if under +oath. + +868. Oceanus is the personified Ocean, a broad, flowing stream encircling +the earth. + +869. Earth-shaking is a Homeric epithet of Neptune. The mace of Neptune +must be his trident. + +870. Tethys is wife of Oceanus and mother of the Oceanids. She reared the +great goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter. Her pace is suitable to her dignity. + +871. hoary Nereus. See note on line 835. + +872. the Carpathian wizard's hook. Proteus, son of Oceanus and Tethys, +herded the sea-calves of Neptune on the island of Carpathus. As a +herdsman he bore a crook, or _hook_. He had the gift of prophecy, and so +is called a _wizard_. + +873. Scaly Triton's winding shell. _Triton_ was herald of Neptune and so +carried a shell, which he was wont to _wind_ as a horn. His body was in +part covered with scales like those of a fish. + +874. The soothsaying Glaucus was a prophet, and gave oracles at Delos. He +is represented as a man whose hair and beard are dripping with water, +with bristly eyebrows, his breast covered with sea-weeds, and the lower +part of his body ending in the tail of a fish. + + 875. By Leucothea's lovely hands, + And her son that rules the strands. + +Ino, after she had slain herself and her son Melicertes, by leaping with +him into the sea, became a protecting deity of mariners under the name +Leucothea, or the white goddess. So she came to the aid of Ulysses when +he was passing on his raft from Calypso's isle to Phæacia. She there +appears "with fair ankles," and when she receives back from him her veil, +which she had lent him, she does it with "_lovely hands_." + +Melicertes becomes a protecting deity of shores, under the name Palæmon. +The Romans identified him with their god Portunus. + +877. By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet. Thetis was the wife of Peleus, and +the mother of Achilles. In Homer she has the epithet _silver-footed_. + +878. the songs of Sirens. See note on line 253. + +879. By dead Parthenope's dear tomb. Parthenope was one of the Sirens. At +Naples her tomb was shown. + +880. And fair Ligea's golden comb. Ligea was probably also a siren. In +Virgil, Georgics IV 336, we find a nymph of this name, spinning wool with +other nymphs, "their bright locks floating over their snowy necks." The +name Ligea means shrill-voiced. + +887. In the reading make in an adverb. + +892. My sliding chariot stays. Compare this use of _stay_ with that found +in lines 134, 577, 820. + +893. the azurn sheen. With _azurn_ compare _cedarn_, line 990. + +908-909. Be careful what inflection you give these lines in the reading. + +913. of precious cure: of precious power to cure. + +921. To wait in Amphitrite's bower. _Amphitrite_ was a daughter of +Oceanus and Tethys. She was goddess of the sea, had the care of its +creatures, and could stir up the waves in storm. + +923. Sprung of old Anchises' line. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, +Brutus the Trojan was the grandson of Æneas and founder of London. +Anchises, in the Homeric story, is the father of Æneas. This fable plays +an important part in the ancient British myth. + +924. thy brimmed waves. A river is happiest when full to its brim. + +930. Of what parts of speech are torrent and flood? + +933. It is very curious that our word beryl and the German _Brille_ come +directly from the same source. + +937. And yet this river is the English Severn! + +957. Note the impressive effect of the five-foot line ending the scene. + +The shepherds have their dance in rustic fashion. The words describing +this dance are the familiar peasant words, jig, duck, nod. The playful +tone in which the spirit calls upon the swains to give place to their +betters is charming. + +964. With the mincing Dryades. "The _Dryades_ were nymphs of woods and +trees, dwelling in groves, ravines, and wooded valleys, and were fond of +making merry with Apollo, Mercury, and Pan." + +980. I suck the liquid air: I inhale the upper air,--the _æther_ +_liquidus_ of the poets. So Ariel, Tempest V 1 102, "I drink the air +before me." + +981. the gardens fair Of Hesperus and his daughters three. The number of +the Hesperides and their parentage are differently given in various +legends. The story of their garden in some mysterious place in the far +west, where they guarded the tree that bore the golden apples, assisted +by the dragon Ladon, is one of the best known in the classic mythology. + +984. Along the crisped shades and bowers. Milton applies _crisped_ to +brooks, Par. Lost IV 237. Herrick has,--"the crisped yew," and the +American Thoreau,--"A million crisped waves." + +985. spruce. A very interesting account of the origin of this word is +given by Skeat in his Etymological Dictionary. + +986. The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours. See note on L'Allegro 15. +"The _Graces_ were guardians of the vernal sweetness and beauty of +nature, friends and protectors of everything graceful and beautiful." The +_Hours_ were goddesses of the seasons, daughters of Zeus and Themis. They +were the door-keepers of Olympus, whose cloud-gate they open and shut: +thus they preside over the weather. + +990. About the cedarn alleys: about the pathways through cedar groves. +Coleridge, in Kubla Khan, has the line, "Down the green hill athwart a +cedarn cover"; and Tennyson, Geraint and Enid, the line,--"And moving +toward a cedarn cabinet." So also William Barnes, in his Rural Poems, +uses the expression, "stonen jugs." + +992. Iris is the messenger of the gods: her path is the rainbow. + +993. Dr. Murray gives other instances of blow as a transitive verb. + +999. Adonis was a young shepherd, the special favorite of Venus. His +death was caused by a wild boar. The story is told in various forms. +Observe that Milton makes him wax well of his deep wound. + +1002. the Assyrian queen. The worship of Aphrodite (Venus) was brought +into Greece from Assyria. + +1005. Holds his dear Psyche. Psyche--the personification of the human +soul--was a mortal maiden, beloved of Cupid. Venus, in her jealousy of +Psyche, compelled her to pass through a long series of hardships and +toils. Cupid at last succeeded in reconciling his mother and his beloved, +and in having _Psyche_ advanced to the dignity of an immortal. + +1015. Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend: where the curvature of the +vault of the sky seems less than higher up toward the zenith. + +1021. the sphery chime. See notes, Hymn on the Nativity 48 and 125. + + + + + LYCIDAS. + + +Lycidas is Milton's contribution to a volume of elegiac verses, in Greek, +Latin, and English, composed by many college friends of Edward King, who +was drowned in the wreck of the vessel in which he was crossing the Irish +Channel. + +In its main intention, Lycidas is an elegy, because it professes to mourn +one who is dead and extols his virtues. In its form it is almost wholly +pastoral, because it feigns an environment of shepherds, allegorizing +college life as the life of men tending flocks, and the occupations of +earnest students as the careless diversions of rustic swains. + +Four times the pastoral note is rudely interrupted by the intervention of +majestic beings who speak in awful tones from another world, and whose +voices instantly check all familiar rustic speech, compelling it to wait +till they have announced their messages from above. The supernal powers +who thus descend to take their parts in the office of mourning are +Phoebus, Apollo, Hippotades, god of the winds, Camus, god of the river +Cam, and St. Peter. This mingling of classic, Hebrew, and Christian +conceptions is a marked characteristic of all Milton's poetry. + +Thus Lycidas is neither wholly elegiac nor wholly pastoral. From the lips +of St. Peter, typifying the church, comes a speech of violent +denunciation, in the true later Miltonic manner. In strange contrast to +this grim invective is the famous flower-passage, the sweetest and +loveliest thing of its kind in our literature. + + +1-5. To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather +laurels,--is to make a new venture as a poet,--to compose a poem. The +berries are harsh and crude,--he shatters their leaves before the +mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man, +or because he feels in himself a lack of "inward ripeness" to treat his +theme worthily,--perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with +forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own +choosing. + +6-7. A sad duty is imposed upon him, forbidding further delay on any +personal grounds. + +8. Lycidas is one of the stock names of pastoral poetry. The poem, though +most serious in its main motive and intention, is to have a pastoral +coloring throughout. Note the impressive repetitions, dead, dead, and the +recurrences of the name Lycidas in the next two lines. + +11. he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. Edward King had, +in accordance with the college custom of his time, written verses, +apparently all in Latin. Of these verses Masson, in his life of Milton, +gives specimens. They seem to be commonplace. + +13. and welter to the parching wind. See Par. Lost II 594, I 78. + +15. Sisters of the sacred well. Ancient tradition connects the origin of +the Muses with Pieria, a district of Macedonia at the foot of Olympus. +But the springs with which we associate the Muses are Aganippe and +Hippocrene on Mount Helicon. + +19. So may some gentle muse. A peculiar use of the word _muse_ as +masculine, and meaning _poet_. + +23-31. We pursued the same studies, at the same college, and we studied +from early morning sometimes till after midnight. The metaphors are all +pastoral. + +32-36. We wrote merry verse, bringing in the college jollities, in wanton +student-fashion, and the good-natured old don who was our tutor affected +to be pleased with our work. + +34. Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel. The _Satyrs_, +represented as having human forms, with small goat's horns and a small +tail, had for their occupation to play on the flute for their master, +Bacchus, or to pour his wine. The _Fauns_ were sylvan deities, attendants +of Pan, and are represented, like their master, with the ears, horns, and +legs of a goat. + +37-49. Nature herself sympathizes with men, and mourns thy loss. + +50. Nymphs: deities of the forests and streams. + +52. on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie. The +shipwreck in which King was lost took place off the coast of Wales. Any +one of the Welsh mountains will serve to make good this allusion. + +54. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high. _Mona_ is the ancient and +poetical name of the island of Anglesea. + +55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. The Dee (Deva) below +Chester expands into a broad estuary. In his lines spoken At a Vacation +Exercise, Milton, characterizing many rivers, mentions the "ancient +hallowed Dee." The country about the Dee had been specially famous as the +seat of the old Druidical religion. In the eleventh Song of his +Polyolbion, Drayton eulogizes the medicinal virtues of the salt springs +in the valley of the river Weever, which attract Thetis and the +Nereids:-- + + And Amphitrite oft this Wizard River led + Into her secret walks (the depths profound and dread) + Of him (supposed so wise) the hid events to know + Of things that were to come, as things done long ago. + In which he had been proved most exquisite to be; + And bare his fame so far, that oft twixt him and Dee, + Much strife there hath arose in their prophetic skill. + +56-63. Even the Muse Calliope could do nothing for her son Orpheus, whom +the Thracian women tore to pieces under the excitement of their +Bacchanalian orgies. The gory visage floated down the Hebrus and through +the Ægean Sea to the island of Lesbos. + +64. what boots it: of what use is it? + +64-66. What good are we going to derive from this unremitting devotion to +study? + +67-69. Would it not be better to abandon ourselves to social enjoyment, +and to lives of frivolous trifling? Amaryllis and Neæra are stock names +of shepherdesses. + +70-72. Understand clear, as applied to spirit, to mean "pure, guileless, +unsophisticated." Sir Henry Wotton, in his Panegyric to King Charles, +says of King James I.,--"I will not deny his appetite of glory, which +generous minds do ever latest part from." Love of fame, according to the +poet, is the motive that prompts the scholar to live as an ascetic and to +persevere in toilsome labor. This love of fame is an infirmity, but not a +debasing one: it leaves the mind noble. Remember, however, that the +author of the Imitation of Christ prayed, _Da mihi nesciri_. + +75. the blind Fury with the abhorred shears. Milton here seems to ascribe +to the Furies (Erinyes) the function belonging to the Fates (Parcæ, +Moiræ). The three Fates were Klotho, the Spinner; Lachesis, the Assigner +of lots; and Atropos, the Unchanging. It was the duty of Atropos to cut +the thread of life at the appointed time. + +A querulous thought comes to the poet's mind. Our lives are obscure and +laborious, sustained only by the hope of future fame; but before we +attain our reward, comes death, and our ambition is brought to naught. + +76-77. But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling +ears. The Fury cannot destroy the praise, which necessarily belongs to +doing well. Praise here means the essential praise, which naturally +inheres in excellence, and not the being talked about by men. + +The speaker is now Phoebus, the august god Apollo, the pure one, who +protects law and order, and promotes whatever is good and beautiful; who +reveals the will of Zeus, and presides over prophecy. + +Phoebus has now an admonition to give and he touches the poet's ears; as +in Virgil, Eclogue IV 3,--_Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit_, "The +Cynthian twitched my ear and warned me." + +79. in the glistering foil Set off. See Shakespeare, Richard III. V 3 +250,--"A base foul stone, made precious by the foil of England's chair." + +85-86. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding +Mincius. Arethusa was a fresh-water fountain at Syracuse in Sicily, and +the Mincius is a river in north Italy, on which is situated Mantua, the +birthplace of the poet Virgil. The great pastoral poet Theocritus is said +to have been born at Syracuse. Thus Arethusa and the Mincius typify the +pastoral tone in which Milton conceives and constructs his poem. But the +intervention of the great god Apollo has frighted the bucolic muses, to +whom therefore the poet explains it, line 87. + +88. Now I am on good terms again with the deities of lower rank. Oat is a +common designation of the shepherd's pipe, or syrinx. + +89-90. Neptune, through his herald, Triton, pleads his freedom from all +complicity in the drowning of Lycidas. Triton sends to Æolus, god of the +winds, requesting him to cross-question all his subjects as to what they +were doing on the day of the wreck. + +95-99. The winds prove their innocence, and Æolus himself comes to report +to Triton that at the time of the disaster they were all at home and the +air was perfectly calm. Even Panope and all her sisters were out playing +on the tranquil water. + +96. sage Hippotades. Æolus was the son of Hippotes. See all about him in +Odyssey, book X. Read also Ruskin, Queen of the Air, section 19. + +99. Panope was a Nereid, one of the numerous daughters of Nereus. + +103. Now comes another grand personage to make inquiry about the death of +Lycidas. Camus, the deity of the river Cam, stands for the University of +Cambridge. + +104. His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge. The river god is represented +as wearing a mantle made of water-grasses and reeds. + +105-106. These lines refer to certain markings on the water-plants of the +Cam, said to be correctly described here by the poet. The dimness of the +figures may suggest the great age of the university, and the tokens of +woe belong to the present occasion. + +106. that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. This is the hyacinth, the +flower that sprang up on the spot where the youth Hyacinthus had been +accidentally slain by Apollo. The petals of the hyacinth are said to be +marked with the Greek letters AI AI, which form an interjection +expressing grief. + +107. Lycidas was one of those collegians whose scholarship, character, +and piety promise to make them the pride of their Alma Mater. + +109. The Pilot of the Galilean Lake. See Matthew XIV. + +110. Two massy keys he bore of metals twain. See Matthew XVI 19. See also +Comus 13 and Par. Lost III 485. The idea of _two_ keys, one of gold and +one of iron, is not in the Bible. + +112. He shook his mitred locks. St. Peter wears the mitre as bishop. + +113-131. St. Peter makes but little reference to Lycidas, and his words +add almost nothing to the elegiac character of the poem. His speech is +one of stern and bitter satire. The second period of Milton's life, which +is to be given up to intense and uncompromising partisanship in religion +and politics, foreshadows itself in these lines. + +114. Enow is here used in its proper plural sense. See note on Comus 780. + +115. climb into the fold. See John X 1. The metaphor of sheep and +herdsmen is continued throughout the speech. + +119. Blind mouths! As the relative pronoun beginning the next clause +refers to this exclamation, mouths must be taken as a bold metaphor +meaning men who are all mouth, or are supremely greedy and selfish. +Moreover, they are blind. + +122. What recks it them? See note on Comus 404. They are sped: they have +succeeded in their purpose. See Antony and Cleopatra II 3 35. Note also +the phrase of greeting, _bid God speed_, as in 2 John I 10, 11, King +James version. + +123. their lean and flashy songs: their sermons. + +Evidently Milton can cull words of extreme disparagement and vilification +as well as words of unapproachable poetic beauty. + +125-127. The congregations are not edified. The miserable preaching they +listen to fails to keep them sound in doctrine. They grow lax in their +faith, and heretical opinions become fashionable. + +128. the grim wolf with privy paw is undoubtedly the Roman church. + +130-131. These lines evidently denounce some terrible retribution that is +sure ere long to overtake the corrupt clergy described in the preceding +passage. The two-handed engine at the door, that stands ready to smite +once and smite no more, has never been definitely explained. We naturally +think of the headsman's axe, which, however, does not become applicable +till the execution of Archbishop Laud, an event not to take place till +eight years after the composition of the poem. It has been suggested that +Milton had in mind the two houses of Parliament, or the Parliament and +the Army, as the agency through which reform was to be effected. We must +remember that Milton in 1637 could not foresee the Civil War. He may have +meant to combine certain scriptural expressions into a mysteriously +suggestive and oracular prediction, without having in view any single and +definite possibility. + +132. Return, Alpheus. The Alpheus was a river of the Peloponnesus, said +to sink underground and to flow beneath the sea to Ortygia, near +Syracuse, where it attempted to mingle its waters with those of the +fountain Arethusa. See note on lines 85, 86. See also Shelley's poem, +Arethusa. + +The pastoral tone of lightness and simplicity could not be maintained +while St. Peter spoke. But now the Sicilian Muse returns, all the more +lovely for the contrast with the stern malediction that has gone before. + +134-151. Milton is fond of thus collecting names of persons, places, and +things, choosing them as well for their effect on the ear as for their +significance. The botany of this passage is of little consequence: it +matters not whether all these flowers could, or could not, be collected +at the same season, or whether they could be found at the time of the +year when Lycidas died. The passage offers a picture of exquisite beauty +to the eye, and to the ear a strain of perfect melody. + +136. where the mild whispers use. The verb _use_, in this intransitive +sense, with only adverbial complement, and meaning _dwell_, is now +obsolete. + +138. the swart star: the star that makes _swart_, or _swarthy; i.e._ the +sun. + +139. enamelled eyes are the flowers generally, which are to be specified. +Scattered over the turf, the flowers seem to be looking upward, like +eyes. + +142. rathe is the adjective whose comparative is our _rather_. + +149. amaranthus, by its etymology, means _unfading_. + +150. Daffadil is derived from _asphodel_, with a curious, and altogether +unusual, prefixed _d_. + +153. dally with false surmise. King's body was not found. There was no +actual strewing of the laureate hearse with flowers. + +156. the stormy Hebrides: islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. + +160. Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old. The fable of Bellerus is the +fabled Bellerus, or Bellerus of the fable. He was a mythical giant of +Cornwall in old British legend. Bellerium was the name given to Land's +End, where he was supposed to live. + +161. the great Vision of the guarded mount. St. Michael's Mount is a +pyramidal rock in Mounts Bay on the coast of Cornwall. This was guarded +by the angel, St. Michael, whose gaze was directed seaward, toward +Namancos and Bayona, in northwestern Spain. In some unknown place between +these widely sundered limits, the body of Lycidas is tossed. + +170. with new-spangled ore. _Ore_, from its original meaning of metal in +the natural state, comes to signify metallic lustre generally. See Comus +719, 933. + +173. See Matthew XIV 25. + +175. Compare Comus 838. + +176. the unexpressive nuptial song. See Hymn on the Nativity 116. See +also Revelation XIX 7-9. + +181. And wipe the tears forever from his eyes. See Revelation XXI 4. + +183. Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore. This is the same +promotion that was accorded to Melicertes, son of Ino, who on his death +became the genius of the shore under the name of Palæmon. + +186. uncouth; a self-depreciating expression meaning _unknown_ or +_obscure_. + +187. Milton applies the epithet gray both to evening and to morning. + +188. various quills are the tubes of the shepherd pipe. + +189. Doric means simply _pastoral_, because the idylls of the first +pastoral poets were written in the Doric dialect of Greek. + +190. had stretched out all the hills: had caused the shadows of the hills +to prolong themselves eastward on the plain. + +The poet seems to feign that he spent a day in the composition of +Lycidas. + + + + + SONNETS. + + +Of poems in strict sonnet form, that is, containing neither more nor less +than fourteen decasyllable iambic lines, interlocked by some scheme of +symmetrical rhyme, not in couplets, Milton left twenty-three, of which +five are in Italian. Of the three sonnets in English omitted from this +edition, two have reference to the violent controversy occasioned by +Milton's publications in advocacy of greater freedom of divorce, and are +rough and polemic in style; the third is omitted on account of its +unimportance and lack of distinction. + +In their dates the twenty-three sonnets range from the poet's +twenty-third to his fiftieth year. They are the only form of verse in +which he indulges during that middle period of his life which was +abandoned to political partisanship on the side of the Parliament in the +Civil War, and to the service of the government during the Commonwealth +and the Protectorate. If, as is now widely believed, Shakespeare's +sonnets are artificial and tell us little or nothing about their author, +those of Milton are purely natural and subjective and tell us nothing +else but what their writer was thinking and feeling. Their themes are his +veritable moods and passions. The mood is now friendly, amiable, and +serene, now bitter, strenuous, indignant, vindictive. + +Wordsworth, in his sonnet, _Scorn not the Sonnet_, thus refers to +Milton's sparing use of this poetic form:-- + + and when a damp + Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand + The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew + Soul-animating strains,--alas too few. + +The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains followed by a +couplet,--the usual English form up to the seventeenth century. Milton +adopted the Italian, or Petrarchian model, which has continued to be the +standard sonnet form in our modern poetry. In the Miltonic, or Italian, +sonnet a group of eight lines, linked by two rhymes each occurring four +times, is followed by a group of six lines linked by three rhymes each +occurring twice. The octave and the sextet are severed from each other by +the non-continuance of the rhymes of the former into the latter. At the +end of the octave, or near it, is usually a pause, marking the +culmination of the thought, and the sextet makes an inference or rounds +out the sense to an artistic whole. + +Read Wordsworth's sonnets, _Happy the feeling from the bosom thrown,_ and +_Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room._ + + + I. + +The date of this sonnet is unknown. From the fact that it comes first in +the series as arranged by the poet, it is inferred that it is the +earliest sonnet he chose to publish. + + +4. the jolly Hours. See note on Comus 986. + +5-6. To hear the nightingale before the cuckoo was for lovers a good +sign. This superstition is a motive in the _Cuckoo and the Nightingale_, +a poem formerly attributed to Chaucer, and as such "modernized" by +Wordsworth, but now known to be the work of Sir Thomas Clanvowe. Stanza X +of this poem is thus given by Wordsworth:-- + + But tossing lately on a sleepless bed, + I of a token thought which Lovers heed; + How among them it was a common tale, + That it was good to hear the Nightingale + Ere the vile Cuckoo's note be utterèd. + +9. the rude bird of hate. This gives to the cuckoo altogether too bad a +character. The bird has on the whole a fair standing in English poetry. +We must think of the very pleasing _Ode to the Cuckoo_,--written either +by Michael Bruce or by John Logan,--as well as of the passage in which +Shakespeare makes Lucrece ask (line 848),-- + + Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? + Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests? + +Look up other nightingale and cuckoo songs; for example, Keats's _Ode to +a Nightingale_, and Wordsworth's _The Cuckoo at Laverna_. + + + II (1631). + +This sonnet Milton appears to have sent with a prose letter to a friend +who had remonstrated with him on the life of desultory study which he was +so long continuing to lead. In this letter he professes the principle of +"not taking thought of being _late_, so it gave advantage to be more +fit." He adds, "That you may see that I am something suspicious of +myself, and do take notice of a certain _belatedness_ in me, I am the +bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some little while ago, +because they come in not altogether unfitly, made up in a Petrarchian +stanza, which I told you of." + + +8. timely-happy: wise with the wisdom proportionate to one's years. +Similar compounds of two adjectives in Shakespeare are very frequent; for +example, holy-cruel, heady-rash, proper-false, devilish-holy, cold-pale. + +10. even: equal, adequate. + + + VIII (1642). + +The occasion of this sonnet was the near approach of the royalist army to +London, early in the Civil War. The people of the city had reason to fear +the entrance of the cavalier troops and the sacking of the houses of +citizens obnoxious to the party of the king. Milton would have been an +object of special animosity to victorious royalists, and for a short time +he had grounds for the acutest anxiety. It is not easy to see how, in +case of actual pillage of the city, he could have made use of such an +appeal as this. The sonnet is probably to be regarded as a work of art +constructed when the vicissitudes which it pictures were happily past, +and when the poet's mind had regained its tranquillity. + + +1. Note that Colonel has three syllables, according to the pronunciation +prevailing in Milton's time. Look up the etymology of this word. + +10. The great Emathian conqueror: Alexander the Great, called Emathian +from Emathia, a district of his kingdom of Macedonia. + +11. bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the +ground. Alexander destroyed the city of Thebes in 335 B.C. Pindar, the +famous lyric poet, a native and resident of Thebes, had then been dead +more than a century. But Pindar's house still stood, and was left +standing by the conqueror, who destroyed all other buildings of the city. + +12. the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet had the power To save the +Athenian walls from ruin bare. To quote from Plutarch, Life of Lysander: +"The proposal was made in the congress of the allies, that the Athenians +should all be sold as slaves; on which occasion Erianthus, the Theban, +gave his vote to pull down the city and turn the country into +sheep-pasture; yet afterwards, when there was a meeting of the captains +together, a man of Phocis singing the first chorus in Euripides' Electra, +which begins,-- + + "Electra, Agamemnon's child, I come + Unto thy desert home, + +they were all melted with compassion, and it seemed to be a cruel deed to +destroy and pull down a city which had been so famous, and produced such +men." + + + IX (1644). + +Who the virtuous young lady was is not known. + + +2. See the gospel of Matthew VII 13. + +5. See Luke X 40-42; Ruth I 14. + +8. Note the "identical" rhyme. The effect of such a rhyme is unpleasant. +Modern poets avoid it. + +9-14. See Matthew XXV 1-13. + + + X (1644 or 1645). + +Lady Margaret's father was the Earl of Marlborough, who had been +President of the Council under Charles I. Milton attributes his death to +political anxiety caused by the dissolution of Charles's third Parliament +in 1629. + + +6-8. that dishonest victory at Chæronea. The victory of Philip over the +Greeks at Chæronea, B.C. 338, is called by the poet _dishonest_ because +obtained by means of intrigue and bribery. that old man eloquent is the +orator and rhetorician Isocrates, who, in his grief over the defeat of +his countrymen, committed suicide. + +9. later born than to have known: too late to have known. _Serius nata +quam ut cognosceres_. + + + XIII (1646). + +"In these lines, Milton, with a musical perception not common amongst +poets, exactly indicates the great merit of Lawes, which distinguishes +his compositions from those of many of his contemporaries and successors. +His careful attention to the words of the poet, the manner in which his +music seems to grow from those words, the perfect coincidence of the +musical with the metrical accent, all put Lawes's songs on a level with +those of Schumann or Liszt."--_Encyclopædia Britannica_. + +See introductory notes to Comus and Arcades. + + +3-4. not to scan With Midas' ears. The god Apollo, during the time of his +servitude to Laomedon, had a quarrel with Pan, who insisted that the +flute was a better instrument than the lyre. The decision was left to +Midas, king of Lydia, who decided in favor of Pan. To punish Midas, +Apollo changed his ears into those of an ass. + +4. committing short and long: setting long syllables and short ones to +fight against each other, and so destroying harmony. + +5. The subject is conceived as a single idea, and so takes the verb in +the singular. exempts thee: singles thee out, selects thee. + +8. couldst humor best our tongue: couldst best adapt or accommodate +itself to our language. + +10. Phoebus' quire: the poets. _Quire_ is Milton's spelling of _choir_. + +12-14. Read the story of Dante's meeting with his friend, the musician +Casella, in the second canto of Purgatory. + + + XV (1648). + +The taking of Colchester by the parliamentary army under Fairfax, Aug. +28, 1648, was one of the most important events of the Civil War. + + +7. the false North displays Her broken league. The Scotch and the English +accused each other of having violated the Solemn League and Covenant, to +which the people of both countries had subscribed. + +8. to imp their serpent wings. To _imp_ a wing with feathers is to attach +feathers to it so as to strengthen or improve its flight. The word is +originally a term of falconry. See Richard II. II 1 292. See also +Murray's _New English Dictionary_. + +13-14. Valor, Avarice, Rapine; personified abstracts, after the manner of +our earlier poetry. + + + XVI. + +As Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State of the +Commonwealth, Milton saw much of Cromwell, and came under the influence +of his voice and manner. Whether the great general had ever taken note of +the poems written by the secretary who turned his despatches into Latin, +or whether he gave any special heed to the man himself, with whom he must +have come into some sort of personal relation, we have no means of +knowing. We know, however, perfectly well what the poet thought of the +victorious general. Though by no means always approving his state policy, +Milton retained to the end the warm personal admiration for Cromwell +which he expresses in this sonnet. + + +7-9. Darwen stream, usually spoken of as the battle of Preston, was +fought Aug. 17, 1648; Dunbar, Sept. 3, 1650; Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651. + +12. to bind our souls with secular chains: to fetter our religious +freedom with laws made by the civil power. + +14. hireling wolves. Milton applies this degrading appellation to +clergymen who received pay from the state. His appeal to Cromwell was not +successful. Cromwell was to become the chief supporter of a church +establishment. + + + XVII (1652). + +Sir Henry Vane was member of a committee of the Council of State +appointed in 1649 to consider alliances and relations with the European +powers. Milton, as Secretary of the Council, had abundant opportunity to +observe Vane's skill in diplomacy, his ability to "unfold the drift of +hollow states hard to be spelled." Both Vane and Milton held to the +doctrine, preëminently associated with the name of Roger Williams, of +universal toleration, based on the refusal to the civil magistrate of any +authority in spiritual matters. + + +1. Vane, young in years: Vane was born in 1613. + +3. gowns, not arms: civilians, not soldiers. The expression is a +Latinism, the _gown_ standing for the _toga_. + +4. The fierce Epirot and the African bold: Pyrrhus and Hannibal. + +6. hard to be spelled. Compare Il Penseroso 170. + + + XVIII (1655). + +The historical event which furnishes the occasion of this sonnet is the +persecution of the Protestant Waldenses by the Piedmontese and French +governments, at the time of Cromwell's Protectorate. Cromwell's vigorous +and successful intervention was the means of staying this horror, and +gives evidence of the respect entertained for his government among the +states of Europe. + + +4. when all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones. Christianity had +been introduced into the Waldensian country while Britain was still +pagan. + +5. their groans Who were thy sheep: the groans of those who were. + +12. The triple Tyrant. The Pope, who wore a triple crown. + +14. the Babylonian woe. The puritans interpreted the _Babylon_ of +Revelation as the church of Rome. See Revelation XVIII. + + + XIX. + +The sonnet, says Masson, may have been written any time between 1652 and +1655. + + +2. Ere half my days. Milton's blindness is considered to have become +total in 1652, when he was at the age of forty-four. How shall we +understand these words? + +3. See the Parable of the Talents, Matthew XXV. + +8. I fondly ask. See note on Il Pens. 6. + + + XX. + +Probable date, 1655. Of the Mr. Lawrence to whom the sonnet is addressed +nothing is certainly known. + + +6. Favonius is the Latin name for Zephyrus, the west wind. + +10. Attic: refined, delicate, poignant. + +13. and spare To interpose them oft: refrain from too free enjoyment of +them. + + + XXI. + +The second sonnet to Cyriac Skinner determines its own date as 1655, and +this one is probably to be assigned to the same year. + +But little is known of the person to whom this sonnet and the next one +are addressed, except what we learn from the sonnets themselves,--that he +was an intimate and esteemed friend of Milton. He may have been one of +Milton's pupils; and he may, when his old teacher had become blind, have +rendered him important services as amanuensis or as reader. + + +1-4. Cyriac Skinner's mother was daughter of the famous lawyer and judge, +Sir Edward Coke. + +2. Themis is personified _law_, this being the meaning of the Greek word. + +7. Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause: intermit for a day your severe +mathematical studies. + +8. And what the Swede intend, and what the French: and pay no heed to +foreign news. + + + XXII (1655). + + +1. this three years' day: three years ago to-day. + +10. Milton's duties as Latin secretary to the government were exceedingly +arduous. + + + XXIII. + +Milton's second wife died in February, 1658; her child lived but a short +time. At the time of his second marriage Milton had been blind several +years. Notice the reference in the sonnet to the sense of sight: in his +dream he _saw_. + + +2. like Alcestis. Read the story of the Love of Alcestis in William +Morris's Earthly Paradise; and read in Euripides, "That strangest, +saddest, sweetest song of his, Alkestis." + +6. Purification in the Old Law. See Leviticus XII. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Minor Poems by Milton, by John Milton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MINOR POEMS BY MILTON *** + +***** This file should be named 31706-8.txt or 31706-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/7/0/31706/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Stephen Hutcheson and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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