LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
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 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 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,
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,
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, e'er 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 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.
O 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, t'whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glist'ring 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 cast 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.
Lady sings
Sweet echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen
Within thy airy shell,.
By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet embroidered vale,
Where the love-lorn nighingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well;
Canst not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are?
Hid them in some flowery cave,
Tell me but where,
Sweet Queen of parly, daughter of the sphere,
So may'st 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 did 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 Syrens three,
Amidst the flow'ry-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,
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.
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he, returning, chide : "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” I fondly ask but Patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And pass o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve, who only stand and wait.'
ON HIS DECEASED WIFE.
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint Purification in the old law did save;
And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight, Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in her face with more delight;
But O, as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
ON THE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. The moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian wo.
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