Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, 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. 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; Benighted in these woods. Now to my charms, 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 I shall appear some harmless villager, Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear. [The LADY enters.] |