Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
Stirs up among the loose unlettered 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, 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 gray-hooded even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,

god

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
But where they are, and why they came not back,

175

180

185

190

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 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 aery 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.

195:

200

205

chil-q

O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope-
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings,—
And thou unblemished form of Chastity!

210

215

ness which afterwards became so prominent a characteristic of Milton's poetry.

Fletcher, in his Faithful Shepherdess, i. 1., speaks of 'voices calling in the dead of night.' Compare what Virgil says (En. iv. 460) of Dido hearing mysterious voices from the shrine of Sychæus:

Hinc exaudiri voces, et verba vocantis Visa viri, nox quum terras obscura teneret.

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 livest unseen
Within thy aery shell,

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:

219. A glistering guardian.] An allusion to Ps. xci. 11: 'He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.'

227. Make.] Cause.

231. Aery shell.] Echo is said to live in an aery shell, because of the reverberation of sound which was regarded as her voice. She fell in love with the beautiful youth Narcissus, but his disregard caused her to pine away, and she was transformed into a rock, retaining, however, the power of voice.

220

225

230

235

The

any slow, winding stream. Mæander of Asia Minor was remarkable for its numerous windings.

234. Love-lorn.] The Saxon word lorn means lost. The epithet love-lorn is here applied to the nightingale in allusion to the story of Philomela, who was so barbarously treated by her sister's husband, Tereus, and who, when fleeing from him, was transformed into a nightingale. Hence it is always as a female that the nightingale is referred to by poets. See the sad story of Philomela in Ovid's Met., vi. 438-676.

232. Meander.] Here put for or of butue fueble were Heaven itself world stoop liter

THE PERSONS.

THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterward in the habit of THYRSIS.

COMUS.

The first Scene discovers a wild Wood.

THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT descends or enters.

BEFORE the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live insphered

In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,

Which men call earth; and, with low-thoughted care
Confined and pestered in this pinfold here,
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that virtue gives,
After this mortal change, to her true servants,

3. Insphered.] Within their assigned sphere. The portions of space occupied by departed souls were called spheres.

7. Pestered in this pinfold.] The word pestered originally means crowded, obstructed. Ital. pesta, a crowd.

Your coach whose rude postilion
Must pester every narrow lane.

So all unhoused souls do thither creep,
Nor are they pestered for want of room.
Sandys' Ovid, iv. 441.

A pinfold is a pen or pound for
cattle.

10

but he blotted out the second line without altering the reference to it in the fourth. Warton, com

Shirley's Lady of Pleasure, i. menting on another passage in Milton, says, 'When a poet corrects, he is apt to forget and destroy his original train of thought.' We must, perhaps, allow the words, as they stand, to mean-after this state of mortal change.

10. After this mortal change.] The demonstrative meaning implied in the word this does not