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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extract from Comus

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

John Milton (1608–1674)

Extract from Comus

[1634; æt. 26. See full text.]

Comus.The star that bids the shepherd fold,

Now the top of heaven doth hold;

And the gilded car of day

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

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,

Dropping odours, dropping wine.

Rigour now is gone to bed,

And advice with scrupulous head,

Strict age, and sour severity,

With their grave saws in slumber lie.

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,

Now to the moon in wav’ring 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, deck’d with daisies trim,

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,

’Tis only day-light that makes sin,

Which these dun shades will ne’er report.

Hail goddess of nocturnal sport,

Dark-veil’d Cotytto! to whom the secret flame

Of midnight torches burns; mysterious dame

That ne’er art call’d, but when the dragon womb

Of Stygian darkness spits her thickest gloom,

And makes one blot of all the air;

Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,

Wherein thou rid’st with Hecat’, and befriend

Us thy vow’d 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 cabin’d loophole peep,

And to the tell-tale sun descry

Our conceal’d solemnity.

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground,

In a light fantastic round.

The Measure.
Break off, break off, I feel the different pace

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,

And to my wily trains: I shall ere long

Be well stock’d with as fair a herd as graz’d

About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl

My dazzling spells into the spongy air,

Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,

And give it false presentments; lest the place

And my quaint habits breed astonishment,

And put the damsel to suspicious flight;

Which must not be, for that ’s against my course:

I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,

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,

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,

My best guide now; methought it was the sound

Of riot and ill-manag’d merriment,

Such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe

Stirs up among the loose unletter’d hinds,

When for their teeming flocks and granges full,

In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,

And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth

To meet the rudeness, and swill’d insolence

Of such late wassailers; yet O! where else

Shall I inform my unacquainted feet

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 favour of these pines,

Stept, as they said, to the next thicket side

To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit

As the kind hospitable woods provide.

They left me then, when the grey-hooded Even,

Like a sad votarist in palmer’s weed,

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phœbus’ wain.

But where they are, and why they came not back,

Is now the labour of my thoughts; ’tis likeliest

They had engaged their wandering steps too far,

And envious darkness, ere they could return,

Had stole them from me; else O thievish night,

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,

In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars,

That Nature hung in Heaven, and fill’d their lamps

With everlasting oil, to give due light

To the misled and lonely traveller?

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

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

The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended

By a strong siding champion, conscience.

O welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,

Thou hov’ring angel girt with golden wings,

And thou, unblemish’d form of Chastity!

I see ye visibly, and now believe

That he, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,

Would send a glist’ring guardian, if need were,

To keep my life and honour unassail’d.

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:

I cannot halloo to my brothers, but

Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest

I ’ll venture, for my new enliven’d spirits

Prompt me; and they perhaps are not far off.

Song.
Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph, that livest unseen

Within thy airy shell,

By slow Meander’s margent green,

And in the violet-embroider’d vale

Where the love-lorn nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:

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,

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.

Enter Comus.
Comus.Can any mortal mixture of earth’s mould

Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?

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,

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;

Who, as they sung, would take the prison’d soul

And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept,

And chid her barking waves into attention,

And fell Charybdis murmur’d soft applause:

Yet they in pleasing slumber lull’d the sense,

And in sweet madness robb’d 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!

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.

Lady.Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise

That is address’d to unattending ears;

Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift

How to regain my sever’d company,

Compell’d me to awake the courteous Echo

To give me answer from her mossy couch.

Comus.What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?

Lady.Dim darkness, and this leafy labyrinth.

Comus.Could that divide you from near-ushering guides?

Lady.They left me weary on a grassy turf.

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.

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 unrazor’d lips.

Comus.Two such I saw, what time the labour’d ox

In his loose traces from the furrow came,

And the swink’d hedger at his supper sate;

I saw them under a green mantling vine

That crawls along the side of yon small hill,

Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots.

Their port was more than human, as they stood;

I took it for a fairy vision

Of some gay creatures of the element,

That in the colours of the rainbow live,

And play i’ the plighted clouds. I was awe-struck,

And as I past, I worshipt; 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?

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.

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 neighbourhood:

And if your stray attendance be yet lodged,

Or shroud within these limits, I shall know

Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark

From her thatch’d pallet rouse; if otherwise,

I can conduct you, lady, to a low

But loyal cottage, where you may be safe

Till further quest.

Lady.Shepherd, I take thy word,

And trust thy honest-offer’d courtesy,

Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds

With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls

In courts of princes, where it first was named

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 proportion’d strength. Shepherd, lead on.[Exeunt.