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Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,

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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,

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 daylight that makes sin, Which these dun shades will ne'er report. Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,

Dark-veiled Cotytto!7 to whom the secret flame Of midnight torches burns; mysterious dame, 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 rid'st with Hecat, and befriend

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 loophole peep,

And to the tell-tale sun descry

Our concealed solemnity.

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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 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, 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 here.

[The LADY enters.]

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