The Complete Poetry of John Milton (36 page)
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Authors: John Milton
Tags: #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Poetry, #European
945
Through this gloomy covert wide,
And not many furlongs thence
Is your Fathers residence,
Where this night are met in state
Many a freind to gratulate
950
His wish’t presence, and beside
All the swains that there abide,
With Jiggs and rural dance resort.
We shall catch them at thir sport,
And our sudden comming there
955
Will double all thir mirth and chere;
Com let us hast, the stars grow high,
But night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.
The scene changes presenting
Ludlow
Town and the Presidents Castle, then com in country-dancers, after them the attendant Spirit, with the two brothers and the Lady.
SONG
Spirit. Back shepherds, back, anough your play
,
Till next sunshine holiday
,
960
Heer be without duck or nod
Other trippings to be trod
Of lighter toes, and such court guise
As
Mercury
did first devise
91
With the mincing
Dryades
965
On the lawns, and on the leas
,
This second Song presents them to their father and mother.
Noble Lord and Lady bright
,
I have brought ye new delight
,
Heer behold so goodly grown
Three fair branches of your own.
970
Heav’n hath timely
92
tri’d thir youth
,
Thir faith, thir patience, and thir truth.
And sent them heer through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise
,
To triumph in victorious dance
975
O’re sensual folly, and intemperance.
The dances ended, the Spirit Epiloguizes.
Spirit.
To the Ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad feilds of the sky:
980
There I suck the liquid air
All amidst the gardens fair
Of
Hesperus
and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree:
98
Along the crisped
94
shades and bowrs
985
Revels the spruce and jocond Spring,
The Graces, and the rosie-boosom’d Howrs,
95
Thither all thir bounties bring,
That there eternal Summer dwells,
And west winds, with musky wing
990
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard
, and
Cassia
’s balmy smells.
Iris
there with humid bow
96
Waters the odorous banks that blow
Flowers of more mingled hew
995
Then her purfl’d
97
scarf can shew,
And drenches with
Elysian
dew
(List mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses
Where young
Adonis
oft reposes,
1000
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits th’
Assyrian
Queen;
98
But farr above in spangled sheen
Celestial
Cupid
her fam’d Son advanc’t
1005
Holds his dear
Psyche
99
sweet intranc’t
After her wandring labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
1010
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so
Jove
hath sworn.
But now my task is smoothly don,
I can fly, or I can run
Quickly to the green earths end,
1015
Where the bow’d welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners
100
of the Moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love vertue, she alone is free,
1020
She can teach ye how to clime
Higher then the spheary chime;
101
Or if Vertue feeble were,
Heav’n it self would stoop to her.
(
1634, before Sept. 29; revised, autumn–winter 1637
)
1
Written originally in celebration of the Earl of Bridgewater’s election as Lord President of Wales,
A Mask
was presented on Sept. 29, 1634, at Ludlow Castle, with his three children enacting the Lady and her brothers. Thyrsis was played by Henry Lawes, music tutor to the Bridgewater family and composer of the music for the masque. As a masque, the work employs songs, dances, ideal and unreal characters and powers; but its length and dramatic action create a play unlike most other masques. Its more usual name of “Comus” is the result of its popularity in the eighteenth century as a play with music by Thomas Arne, into which frequently were interpolated passages from
L’Allegro.
But this title gives a false impression, for Milton’s emphasis is not on evil but on the positive virtue of Temperance, on the dynamic purity of Chastity, as Woodhouse and others have argued. Basically the masque is a temptation in a wilderness involving Comus’ proffer of drink, his admonition that the earth’s riches and beauty must not be hoarded, and his immobilizing the Lady in alabaster, which nonetheless cannot immanacle her mind “while Heav’n sees good.” What overcomes Comus’ glozing wrords is Virtue, which “may be assail’d but never hurt.”
2
John xiv. 2: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”
3
1 Cor. ix. 25: “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible”; and Rev. ii. 10: “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
4
immortal garments.
5
Pluto.
6
Wales, whose Lord President was the Earl of Bridgewater; the celebration of his “new-entrusted Scepter” awaits the arrival of his children through “this drear wood”—the story background for the masque.
7
great.
8
Bacchus, carried off by pirates, changed them into dolphins.
9
Aeaea where the enchantress transformed Ulysses’ men to swine.
10
French and Spanish lands, known for their wine.
11
lynx.
12
material of a rainbow, “the bow in the cloud” of Noah (Gen. ix. 11-17).
13
Milton praises Lawes (the “swain” of l. 84) by comparison with Orpheus.
14
The evening star, Hesperus, rising, is a sign to gather sheep into their fold for the night.
15
cool.
16
those creating the music of the spheres.
17
a rustic dance.
18
night revels.
19
a Thracian goddess of nightly pleasure.
20
goddess of the moon (her team was three dragons, l. 131) and of witchcraft.
21
tricks.
22
flattering.
23
here the god of shepherds.
24
a serious religious devotee whose dress shows that he has kept his vow of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
25
one with a slide by which the light can be concealed. Since Fawkes had used one in the Gunpowder Plot, the image had become nefarious.
26
a winding river.
27
The Lady likens her brothers to a beautiful youth beloved by Echo.
28
musical cadence.
29
rocks lying opposite the whirlpool Charybdis, which Ulysses had to pass, personified as a woman with
six
heads that barked like dogs.
30
wearied.
31
pleated.
32
stream lined with bushes.
33
a reed made into a candle by dipping in tallow.
34
the Great Bear and the pole star of the Lesser Bear, by which, respectively, Greek and Phoenician sailors set their course.
35
over-precise.
36
probably a prefix meaning “very.”
37
the earth.
38
likes.
39
unenchantable.
40
The golden apples of the tree had been given to Hera (queen of the gods) by Gaia (goddess of the earth) upon her marriage to Jove (God). See ll. 981-93 and n.
41
does not matter to me.
42
unaccompanied.
43
like Diana, goddess of the hunt and of chastity.
44
panther.
45
See
El.
4, n. 21.
46
becomes sensual and brutish.
47
led helplessly astray by night.
48
nearer.
49
swords.
50
rushing forward in confusion.
51
center.
52
removing the look of reason in one’s face.
53
unaware.
54
pensiveness, which here leads to Thyrsis’ playing his pipe until his imagination has vented his thoughts.
55
completion of the music.
56
outrun (their meeting).
57
sentenoe.
58
bugbears, bogies.
59
prey.
60
enterprise.
61
health-giving.
62
medicinal plants.
63
shoes heavy with nails.
64
to ward off Circe’s charms.
65
snares.
66
They were conceived as lying beneath volcanoes.
67
The attendant spirit as Thyrsis is doing just that.
68
See
El.
5, n. 3.
69
an opiate. Reference is
Od.
, IV, 221.
70
lustful.
71
a fur used on scholars’ gowns; hence, solemn, austere.