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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 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 swilled insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet oh! 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,
Stepped, 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 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,
In thy dark lanthorn 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?

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.

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,
To keep my life and honour unassailed.

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 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,

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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.

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 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,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades

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,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause;

Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,
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!

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

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