My best guide now: methought it was the sound Such as the jocund flute, or gamesome pipe, In the blind mazes of this tangled wood? They left me then, when the grey-hooded even, Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' 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, This is the place, as well as I may guess, Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, These thoughts may startle well, but not astound, The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion, Conscience. Oh, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings, And thou unblemished 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 glistering guardian, if need were, Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud I did not err; there does a sable cloud 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 Within thy airy shell, 8 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; Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair That likest thy Narcissus are? Oh! if thou have Hid them in some flowery cave, Tell me but where, Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere, So mayst thou be translated to the skies, And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies. COMUS. Sure something holy lodges in that breast, And with these raptures moves the vocal air How sweetly do 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, Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,9 And chid her barking waves into attention, Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense, 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 |