Chapter VI: Part 6

'It is of no little consequence, O citizens, by what
principles you are governed, either in acquiring liberty, or
in retaining it when acquired. And unless that liberty which
is of such a kind as arms can neither procure nor take away,
which alone is the fruit of piety, of justice, of temperance,
and unadulterated virtue, shall have taken deep root in your
minds and hearts, there will not long be wanting one who will
snatch from you by treachery what you have acquired by arms.
War has made many great whom peace makes small. If after being
released from the toils of war, you neglect the arts of peace,
if your peace and your liberty be a state of warfare, if war
be your only virtue, the summit of your praise, you will,
believe me, soon find peace the most adverse to your
interests. Your peace will be only a more distressing war; and
that which you imagined liberty will prove the worst of
slavery. Unless by the means of piety, not frothy and
loquacious, but operative, unadulterated, and sincere, you
clear the horizon of the mind from those mists of superstition
which arise from the ignorance of true religion, you will
always have those who will bend your necks to the yoke as if
you were brutes, who, notwithstanding all your triumphs, will
put you up to the highest bidder, as if you were mere booty
made in war; and will find an exuberant source of wealth in
your ignorance and superstition. Unless you will subjugate the
propensity to avarice, to ambition, and sensuality, and expel
all luxury from yourselves and your families, you will find
that you have cherished a more stubborn and intractable despot
at home, than you ever encountered in the field; and even your
very bowels will be continually teeming with an intolerable
progeny of tyrants. Let these be the first enemies whom you
subdue; this constitutes the campaign of peace; these are
triumphs, difficult indeed, but bloodless; and far more
honorable than those trophies which are purchased only by
slaughter and by rapine. Unless you are victors in this
service, it is in vain that you have been victorious over the
despotic enemy in the field. For if you think that it is a
more grand, a more beneficial, or a more wise policy, to
invent subtle expedients for increasing the revenue, to
multiply our naval and military force, to rival in craft the
ambassadors of foreign states, to form skillful treaties and
alliances, than to administer unpolluted justice to the
people, to redress the injured and to succour the distressed,
and speedily to restore to every one his own, you are involved
in a cloud of error; and too late will you perceive, when the
illusion of those mighty benefits has vanished, that in
neglecting these, which you now think inferior considerations,
you have only been precipitating your own ruin and despair.
The fidelity of enemies and allies is frail and perishing,
unless it be cemented by the principles of justice; that
wealth and those honours, which most covet, readily change
masters; they forsake the idle, and repair where virtue, where
industry, where patience flourish most. Thus nation
precipitates the downfall of nation; thus the more sound part
of one people subverts the more corrupt; thus you obtained the
ascendant over the royalists. If you plunge into the same
depravity, if you imitate their excesses, and hanker after the
same vanities, you will become royalists as well as they, and
liable to be subdued by the same enemies, or by others in your
turn; who, placing their reliance on the same religious
principles, the same patience, the same integrity and
discretion which made you strong, will deservedly triumph over
you who are immersed in debauchery, in the luxury and the
sloth of kings. Then, as if God was weary of protecting you,
you will be seen to have passed through the fire that you
might perish in the smoke; the contempt which you will then
experience will be great as the admiration which you now
enjoy; and, what may in future profit others, but cannot
benefit yourselves, you will leave a salutary proof what great
things the solid reality of virtue and of piety might have
effected, when the mere counterfeit and varnished resemblance
could attempt such mighty achievements, and make such
considerable advances towards the execution. For, if either
through your want of knowledge, your want of constancy, or
your want of virtue, attempts so noble, and actions so
glorious, have had an issue so unfortunate, it does not
therefore follow that better men should be either less daring
in their projects or less sanguine in their hopes. But from
such an abyss of corruption into which you so readily fall, no
one, not even Cromwell himself, nor a whole nation of
Brutuses, if they were alive, could deliver you if they would,
or would deliver you if they could. For who would vindicate
your right of unrestrained suffrage, or of choosing what
representatives you liked best, merely that you might elect
the creatures of your own faction, whoever they might be, or
him, however small might be his worth, who would give you the
most lavish feasts, and enable you to drink to the greatest
excess? Thus not wisdom and authority, but turbulence and
gluttony, would soon exalt the vilest miscreants from our
taverns and our brothels, from our towns and villages, to the
rank and dignity of senators. For should the management of the
republic be entrusted to persons to whom no one would
willingly entrust the management of his private concerns; and
the treasury of the state be left to the care of those who had
lavished their own fortunes in an infamous prodigality? Should
they have the charge of the public purse, which they would
soon convert into a private, by their unprincipled
peculations? Are they fit to be the legislators of a whole
people who themselves know not what law, what reason, what
right and wrong, what crooked and straight, what licit and
illicit means? who think that all power consists in outrage,
all dignity in the parade of insolence? who neglect every
other consideration for the corrupt qualification of their
friendships, or the prosecution of their resentments? who
disperse their own relations and creatures through the
provinces, for the sake of levying taxes and confiscating
goods; men, for the greater part, the most profligate and
vile, who buy up for themselves what they pretend to expose to
sale, who thence collect an exorbitant mass of wealth, which
they fraudulently divert from the public service; who thus
spread their pillage through the country, and in a moment
emerge from penury and rags to a state of splendour and of
wealth? Who could endure such thievish servants, such
vicegerents of their lords? Who could believe that the masters
and the patrons of a banditti could be the proper guardians of
liberty? or who would suppose that he should ever be made one
hair more free by such a set of public functionaries, (though
they might amount to five hundred elected in this manner from
the counties and boroughs,) when among them who are the very
guardians of liberty, and to whose custody it is committed,
there must be so many, who know not either how to use or to
enjoy liberty, who neither understand the principles nor merit
the possession? But, what is worthy of remark, those who are
the most unworthy of liberty are wont to behave most
ungratefully towards their deliverers. Among such persons, who
would be willing either to fight for liberty, or to encounter
the least peril in its defence? It is not agreeable to the
nature of things that such persons ever should be free.
However much they may brawl about liberty, they are slaves,
both at home and abroad, but without perceiving it; and when
they do perceive it, like unruly horses that are impatient of
the bit, they will endeavour to throw off the yoke, not from
the love of genuine liberty, (which a good man only loves and
knows how to obtain,) but from the impulses of pride and
little passions. But though they often attempt it by arms,
they will make no advances to the execution; they may change
their masters, but will never be able to get rid of their
servitude. This often happened to the ancient Romans, wasted
by excess, and enervated by luxury: and it has still more so
been the fate of the moderns; when, after a long interval of
years, they aspired, under the auspices of Crescentius
Nomentanus, and afterwards of Nicolas Rentius, who had assumed
the title of Tribune of the People, to restore the splendour
and reëstablish the government of ancient Rome. For, instead
of fretting with vexation, or thinking that you can lay the
blame on any one but yourselves, know that to be free is the
same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and
just, to be frugal and abstinent, and, lastly, to be
magnanimous and brave; so to be the opposite of all these is
the same as to be a slave; and it usually happens, by the
appointment, and as it were retributive justice, of the Deity,
that that people which cannot govern themselves, and moderate
their passions, but crouch under the slavery of their lusts,
should be delivered up to the sway of those whom they abhor,
and made to submit to an involuntary servitude. It is also
sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the constitution
of nature, that he who from the imbecility or derangement of
his intellect, is incapable of governing himself, should, like
a minor, be committed to the government of another; and least
of all should he be appointed to superintend the affairs of
others or the interest of the state. You, therefore, who wish
to remain free, either instantly be wise, or, as soon as
possible, cease to be fools; if you think slavery an
intolerable evil, learn obedience to reason and the government
of yourselves; and, finally, bid adieu to your dissensions,
your jealousies, your superstitions, your outrages, your
rapine, and your lusts. Unless you will spare no pains to
effect this, you must be judged unfit, both by God and
mankind, to be entrusted with the possession of liberty and
the administration of the government; but will rather, like a
nation in a state of pupilage, want some active and courageous
guardian to undertake the management of your affairs. With
respect to myself, whatever turn things may take, I thought
that my exertions on the present occasion would be serviceable
to my country; and, as they have been cheerfully bestowed, I
hope that they have not been bestowed in vain. And I have not
circumscribed my defence of liberty within any petty circle
around me, but have made it so general and comprehensive, that
the justice and the reasonableness of such uncommon
occurrences, explained and defended, both among my countrymen
and among foreigners, and which all good men cannot but
approve, may serve to exalt the glory of my country, and to
excite the imitation of posterity. If the conclusion do not
answer to the beginning, that is their concern; I have
delivered my testimony, I would almost say, have erected a
monument, that will not readily be destroyed, to the reality
of those singular and mighty achievements which were above all
praise. As the epic poet, who adheres at all to the rules of
that species of composition, does not profess to describe the
whole life of the hero whom he celebrates, but only some
particular action of his life, as the resentment of Achilles
at Troy, the return of Ulysses, or the coming of Æneas into
Italy; so it will be sufficient, either for my justification
or apology, that I have heroically celebrated at least one
exploit of my countrymen; I pass by the rest, for who could
recite the achievements of a whole people? If, after such a
display of courage and of vigour, you basely relinquish the
path of virtue, if you do anything unworthy of yourselves,
posterity will sit in judgment on your conduct. They will see
that the foundations were well laid; that the beginning (nay,
it was more than a beginning) was glorious; but with deep
emotions of concern will they regret, that those were wanting
who might have completed the structure. They will lament that
perseverance was not conjoined with such exertions and such
virtues. They will see that there was a rich harvest of glory,
and an opportunity afforded for the greatest achievements, but
that men only were wanting for the execution; while they were
not wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort, inspire, and
bind an unfading wreath of praise round the brows of the
illustrious actors in so glorious a scene.'

This informing idea of the Prose Works comes out explicitly in the second of the sonnets,

_On the Detraction which followed upon my Writing Certain Treatises_

'I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs:
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs 5
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
But this is got by casting pearl to hogs,
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free. 10
Licence they mean when they cry liberty;
For who loves that must first be wise and good;
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.'

Again it appears, and in the most explicit form, in the 'Paradise Lost,' Book xii. 82-101. The angel Michael, in his discourse with Adam, on the mount of speculation, says:

'yet know withal,
Since thy original lapse, true liberty
Is lost, which always with right reason dwells
Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being. 85
Reason in man obscured, or not obeyed,
Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart passions catch the government
From Reason, and to servitude reduce
Man, till then free. Therefore, since he permits 90
Within himself unworthy powers to reign
Over free reason, God, in judgment just,
Subjects him from without to violent lords,
Who oft as undeservedly enthral
His outward freedom. Tyranny must be, 95
Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse.
Yet sometimes nations will decline so low
From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong,
But justice and some fatal curse annexed,
Deprives them of their outward liberty, 100
Their inward lost.'

In the 'Samson Agonistes,' Samson says to the Chorus (vv. 268-276, and here Milton may be said virtually to speak, as he does throughout the drama, in _propria personâ_):

'But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty, 270
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
And to despise, or envy, or suspect
Whom God hath of his special favour raised
As their deliverer? if he aught begin,
How frequent to desert him, and at last 275
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds?'

In the 'Paradise Regained,' Book ii. 410-486, Satan says to the Saviour:

'all thy heart is set on high designs, 410
High actions; but wherewith to be achieved?
Great acts require great means of enterprise;
Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth,
A carpenter thy father known, thyself
Bred up in poverty and straits at home, 415
Lost in a desert here, and hunger-bit.
Which way, or from what hope, dost thou aspire
To greatness? whence authority derivest?
What followers, what retinue canst thou gain?
Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude, 420
Longer than thou canst feed them on thy cost?
Money brings honour, friends, conquest, and realms.
What raised Antipater, the Edomite,
And his son Herod placed on Judah's throne—
Thy throne—but gold that got him puissant friends? 425
Therefore, if at great things thou wouldest arrive,
Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap,—
Not difficult, if thou hearken to me.
Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand;
They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain, 430
While virtue, valour, wisdom, sit in want.'
To whom thus Jesus patiently replied:
'Yet wealth without these three is impotent
To gain dominion, or to keep it gained;
Witness those ancient empires of the earth, 435
In highth of all their flowing wealth dissolved.
But men endued with these have oft attained
In lowest poverty to highest deeds;
Gideon, and Jephtha, and the shepherd-lad,
Whose offspring on the throne of Judah sat 440
So many ages, and shalt yet regain
That seat, and reign in Israel without end.
Among the Heathen—for throughout the world
To me is not unknown what hath been done
Worthy of memorial—canst thou not remember 445
Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus?
For I esteem those names of men so poor,
Who could do mighty things, and could contemn
Riches, though offered from the hand of kings.
And what in me seems wanting, but that I 450
May also in this poverty as soon
Accomplish what they did? perhaps and more.
Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt
To slacken Virtue, and abate her edge, 455
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
What, if with like aversion I reject
Riches and realms! yet not, for that a crown,
Golden in shew, is but a wreath of thorns,
Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights, 460
To him who wears the regal diadem,
When on his shoulders each man's burden lies;
For therein stands the office of a king,
His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise,
That for the public all this weight he bears. 465
Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains:
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes, 470
Subject himself to anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him, which he serves.
But to guide nations in the way of truth
By saving doctrine, and from error lead
To know, and knowing, worship God aright, 475
Is yet more kingly: this attracts the soul,
Governs the inner man, the nobler part;
That other o'er the body only reigns,
And oft by force, which to a generous mind
So reigning can be no sincere delight. 480
Besides, to give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous, than to assume.
Riches are needless then, both for themselves,
And for thy reason why they should be sought, 485
To gain a sceptre, oftest better missed.'

All this, it may be truly said, is nothing more than the old teaching of Solomon, 'He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city' (Prov. xvi. 32). There has always been truth enough in the world which, if realized in men's lives, would soon bring about the millennium. But, unfortunately, it has only been born in their brains.

Great writers owe their power among men, not necessarily so much to a wide range of ideas or to the originality of their ideas, as to the vitality which they are able to impart to some one comprehensive fructifying idea with which, through constitution of mind, or circumstances, they have become _possessed_. It is only when a man is really possessed with an idea (that is, if it does not run away with him), that he can express it with a quickening power, and ring all possible changes upon it.

The passages quoted sufficiently show the _kind_ of liberty which Milton estimated above all others, and to the advancement of which he devoted his best powers, for twenty years, and those years the best, generally, of a man's life, for intellectual and creative work, namely, from thirty-two to fifty-two. The last eight of those years he worked in total darkness, not bating a jot of heart or hope, sustained by the consciousness of having lost his eyes 'overplied in Liberty's defence'—'the glorious liberty,' more especially, 'of the children of God,' 'the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,' without which, outward liberty he regarded as a temptation and a snare.

In addition to the absolute merit attaching to his labors in the cause of liberty, it must not be forgotten that he turned aside with a heroic self-denial, during all those years of his manhood's prime, from what he had, from his early years up, felt himself dedicated to, and toward fitting himself for the accomplishment of which, he had, with an unflagging ardor, trained and marshalled all his faculties.

COMUS

_A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales_

Masques, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., were generally written for the entertainment of royalty and nobility. They were, besides, in most cases, presented by royal and noble persons. In their setting, they were in strong contrast to the public drama of the day, got up, as they were, with great magnificence of architecture, scenery, and 'appareling' (Ben Jonson's word for the apparatus of the scene), and frequently at an enormous expense. They were generally offset by grotesque and comic antimasques, which were played by common actors, dancers, and buffoons, from the public theatres. Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was probably not written as a regular drama for the public stage, but as a masque, on the occasion of some noble marriage. 'The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe' presented by the 'rude mechanicals,' 'hard-handed men,' in the fifth act, is the antimasque. It offsets the Masque in a special way. The Masque makes great demands on the imagination in its presentation of the fairy world; the antimasque is absurdly realistic—nothing is left by the 'rude mechanicals' to the imagination.

The Masque of 'Comus' is the last notable, if not entirely the last, composition of the kind in English literature, and the loftiest and loveliest. It is a glorification of the power of purity and chastity over the impure and the unchaste; and the poet no doubt meant it as a reflection upon the license and excesses and revelries (of which Comus is a personification) of the profligate and extravagant court of the time, imported from 'Celtic and Iberian fields.' The now obvious attitude of the composition was perhaps not at all suspected when it was performed at Ludlow Castle.

There is nothing in the Masque of 'Comus' that is even suggestive of the antimasque of the earlier masques, unless it be where the Country Dancers come in before the entrance of the Attendant Spirit with the two Brothers and the Lady, who catch the dancers at their sport. The Attendant Spirit addresses them in the song (vv. 958-965):

'Back, shepherds, back! Enough your play
Till next sunshine holiday.
Here be, without duck or nod,
Other trippings to be trod
Of lighter toes,' etc.

The subject of 'Comus' was too serious to be offset or parodied in any way by an antimasque; and, furthermore, Milton was not the man for anything of the kind. His theme excluded all humor, even if he had had any to expend upon it. Its seriousness must have been deepened for him by what he no doubt already felt in regard to the Court and the Church, that both were corrupt, and that both were leagued in their despotic tendencies, or rather in their actual despotic characters.

The traditional story that the two sons of the Earl of Bridgewater, the Lord Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, and their sister, the Lady Alice Egerton, were lost in Haywood Forest on their way to Ludlow Castle from Herefordshire, where they had been visiting their relatives, the Egertons, and that the Lady Alice was for a time separated from her brothers, they having gone to discover the right path, may have had its origin in the Masque. This seems more likely than that the Masque had its origin in the story.

In the talk of the two Brothers in regard to their lost sister, the idea of the Masque is explicitly presented by the elder Brother. He had said:

'My sister is not so defenceless left
As you imagine; she has a hidden strength
Which you remember not.'

The second Brother replies:

'What hidden strength,
Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that?'

And then the elder Brother gives expression, in a long speech, the gem of the Masque (vv. 418-475), to the power of chastity and purity over the unchaste and the impure.

In the service of this idea, the poet started, no doubt, with Comus, the personification of unchaste and impure revelry (κῶμος), and therefrom constructed his plot, in which a pure maiden is brought within range of the wiles and temptations of the enchanter. And as the daughter of the noble family for which the Masque was written was to play the part of the tempted maiden, in the presentation of the Masque, the incident of her being temporarily and necessarily left alone by her brothers in the forest, would be readily suggested to the poet. It afforded him, too, an opportunity of paying a high compliment to the children of the Earl of Bridgewater.

The traditional story may therefore be safely regarded as a figment.

Henry Lawes, the most prominent music teacher of the time, in noble and wealthy families, and with a high reputation as a musical composer, furnished the music for the Masque, and took the part of the Attendant Spirit, first appearing as such, and afterward in the guise of the old and faithful shepherd Thyrsis. It is not known by whom the parts of Comus and Sabrina were taken.

Lawes had been one of Milton's musical friends from early boyhood.

Milton addressed the following sonnet to him, which was prefixed to 'Choice Psalmes . . . by Henry and William Lawes, brothers, 1648.' In Milton's volume of poems published in 1645, Lawes is represented as 'Gentleman of the king's chapel and one of His Majesty's private music.'

_To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Airs_ (1646)

'Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas' ears, committing short and long,
Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, 5
With praise enough for envy to look wan;
To after-age thou shalt be writ the man,
That with smooth air could humour best our tongue.
Thou honourest verse, and verse must lend her wing
To honour thee, the priest of Phœbus' quire, 10
That tunest their happiest lines in hymn or story.
Dante shall give fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.'

THE PERSONS

THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterward in the habit of THYRSIS.
COMUS, with his Crew.
THE LADY.
FIRST BROTHER.
SECOND BROTHER.
SABRINA, the Nymph.

The Chief Persons which presented were:

The Lord Brackley;
Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother;
The Lady Alice Egerton.

_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 5
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, 10
Amongst the enthronèd Gods on sainted seats.
Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.
To such my errand is; and, but for such, 15
I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds
With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.
But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream,
Took in by lot, 'twixt high and nether Jove, 20
Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadornèd bosom of the deep;
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
By course commits to several government, 25
And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns
And wield their little tridents. But this Isle,
The greatest and the best of all the main,
He quarters to his blue-haired deities;
And all this tract that fronts the falling sun 30
A noble Peer of mickle trust and power
Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide
An old and haughty nation proud in arms:
Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore,
Are coming to attend their father's state, 35
And new-intrusted sceptre. But their way
Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood,
The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger;
And here their tender age might suffer peril, 40
But that, by quick command from sovran Jove,
I was despatched for their defence and guard.
And listen why; for I will tell you now
What never yet was heard in tale or song,
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. 45
Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crushed the sweet poison of misusèd wine,
After the Tuscan mariners transformed,
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
On Circe's island fell. (Who knows not Circe, 50
The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a grovelling swine?)
This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks,
With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth, 55
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son
Much like his father, but his mother more,
Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named:
Who, ripe, and frolic of his full-grown age,
Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60
At last betakes him to this ominous wood,
And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered,
Excels his mother at her mighty art,
Offering to every weary traveller
His orient liquor in a crystal glass, 65
To quench the drouth of Phœbus; which as they taste
(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst),
Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear, 70
Or ounce, or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
All other parts remaining as they were.
And they, so perfect is their misery,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,
But boast themselves more comely than before, 75
And all their friends and native home forget,
To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.
Therefore, when any favoured of high Jove
Chances to pass through this adventurous glade,
Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star 80
I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy,
As now I do. But first I must put off
These my sky robes, spun out of Iris' woof,
And take the weeds and likeness of a swain
That to the service of this house belongs, 85
Who, with his soft pipe, and smooth-dittied song,
Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,
And hush the waving woods; nor of less faith,
And in this office of his mountain watch
Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90
Of this occasion. But I hear the tread
Of hateful steps; I must be viewless now.

_COMUS enters, with a charming rod in one hand, his glass
in the other; with him a rout of monsters, headed like
sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and
women, their apparel glistering. They come in making a
riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands._

_Comus._ The star that bids the shepherd fold
Now the top of heaven doth hold;
And the gilded car of day 95
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream;
And the slope sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing toward the other goal 100
Of his chamber in the east.
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Braid your locks with rosy twine, 105
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigour now is gone to bed;
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sour Severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie. 110
We, that are of purer fire,
Imitate the starry quire,
Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, 115
Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, 120
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep;
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove;
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
Come, let us our rites begin, 125
—'Tis only daylight that makes sin—
Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130
That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb
Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the air!
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend 135
Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out;
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
From her cabined loop-hole peep, 140
And to the tell-tale Sun descry
Our concealed solemnity.
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
In a light fantastic round.

_The Measure._

Break off, break off! I feel the different pace 145
Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;
Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
(For so I can distinguish by mine art)
Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, 150
And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
My dazzling spells into the spungy air,
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, 155
And give it false presentments, lest the place
And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
Which must not be, for that's against my course.
I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, 160
And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
Baited with reasons not unplausible,
Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
And hug him into snares. When once her eye
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust, 165
I shall appear some harmless villager
Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
And hearken, if I may her business hear.

_The LADY enters._

_Lady._ This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, 170
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, 175
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 180
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 185
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 Phœbus' wain. 190
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, 195
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? 200
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 205
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 210
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! 215
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. . . . 220
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. 225
I cannot hallo 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 230
Within thy airy 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: 235
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, 240
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? 245
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, 250
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, 255
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, 260
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! 265
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
To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood. 270

_Lady._ Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is addressed to unattending ears.
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my severed company,
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo 275
To give me answer from her mossy couch.

_Comus._ What chance, good Lady, hath bereft you thus?

_Lady._ Dim darkness and this leavy labyrinth.

_Comus._ Could that divide you from near-ushering guides?

_Lady._ They left me weary on a grassy turf. 280

_Comus._ By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why?

_Lady._ To seek i' the valley some cool friendly spring.

_Comus._ And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady?

_Lady._ They were but twain, and purposed quick return.

_Comus._ Perhaps forestalling night prevented them. 285

_Lady._ How easy my misfortune is to hit!

_Comus._ Imports their loss, beside the present need?

_Lady._ No less than if I should my brothers lose.

_Comus._ Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom?

_Lady._ As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips. 290

_Comus._ Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.
I saw them under a green mantling vine,
That crawls along the side of yon small hill, 295
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots;
Their port was more than human, as they stood.
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live, 300
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook,
And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek,
It were a journey like the path to Heaven
To help you find them.

_Lady._ Gentle villager,
What readiest way would bring me to that place? 305

_Comus._ Due west it rises from this shrubby point.

_Lady._ To find out that, good shepherd, I suppose,
In such a scant allowance of star-light,
Would overtask the best land-pilot's art,
Without the sure guess of well-practised feet. 310

_Comus._ I know each lane, and every alley green,
Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood,
And every bosky bourn from side to side,
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood;
And, if your stray attendance be yet lodged, 315
Or shroud within these limits, I shall know
Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark
From her thatched pallet rouse. If otherwise,
I can conduct you, Lady, to a low
But loyal cottage, where you may be safe 320
Till further quest.

_Lady._ Shepherd, I take thy word,
And trust thy honest-offered courtesy;
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds,
With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls
And courts of princes, where it first was named, 325
And yet is most pretended. In a place
Less warranted than this, or less secure,
It cannot be, that I should fear to change it.
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial
To my proportioned strength! Shepherd, lead on. 330

_Enter the TWO BROTHERS._

_Eld. Bro._ Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou, fair moon,
That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here
In double night of darkness and of shades; 335
Or, if your influence be quite dammed up
With black usurping mists, some gentle taper,
Though a rush-candle from the wicker hole
Of some clay habitation, visit us
With thy long-levelled rule of streaming light, 340
And thou shalt be our Star of Arcady,
Or Tyrian Cynosure.

_Sec. Bro._ Or, if our eyes
Be barred that happiness, might we but hear
The folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes,
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaken stops, 345
Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock
Count the night-watches to his feathery dames,
'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering,
In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.
But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister! 350
Where may she wander now, whither betake her
From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles?
Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now,
Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm
Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. 355
What if in wild amazement and affright,
Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp
Of savage hunger, or of savage heat!

_Eld. Bro._ Peace, brother: be not over-exquisite
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; 360
For, grant they be so, while they rest unknown,
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid?
Or, if they be but false alarms of fear,
How bitter is such self-delusion! 365
I do not think my sister so to seek,
Or so unprincipled in virtue's book,
And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever,
As that the single want of light and noise
(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not) 370
Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts,
And put them into misbecoming plight.
Virtue could see to do what Virtue would
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self 375
Oft seeks to sweet retirèd solitude,
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That, in the various bustle of resort,
Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired. 380
He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.

_Sec. Bro._ 'Tis most true 385
That musing meditation most affects
The pensive secrecy of desert-cell,
Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds,
And sits as safe as in a senate-house;
For who would rob a hermit of his weeds, 390
His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,
Or do his grey hairs any violence?
But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree
Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
Of dragon-watch with unenchanted eye, 395
To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit,
From the rash hand of bold Incontinence.
You may as well spread out the unsunned heaps
Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den,
And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope 400
Danger will wink on Opportunity,
And let a single helpless maiden pass
Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste.
Of night or loneliness it recks me not;
I fear the dread events that dog them both, 405
Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person
Of our unownèd sister.

_Eld. Bro._ I do not, brother,
Infer as if I thought my sister's state
Secure without all doubt or controversy;
Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear 410
Does arbitrate the event, my nature is
That I incline to hope rather than fear,
And gladly banish squint suspicion.
My sister is not so defenceless left
As you imagine; she has a hidden strength, 415
Which you remember not.

_Sec. Bro._ What hidden strength,
Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that?

_Eld. Bro._ I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength,
Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own.
'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity; 420
She that has that, is clad in complete steel,
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths,
Infámous hills, and sandy perilous wilds;
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity, 425
No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.
Yea, there where very desolation dwells,
By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades,
She may pass on with unblenched majesty, 430
Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.
Some say no evil thing that walks by night,
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, 435
No goblin or swart faery of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.
Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call
Antiquity from the old schools of Greece
To testify the arms of chastity? 440
Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow,
Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste,
Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness
And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought
The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men 445
Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods.
What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield
That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin,
Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone,
But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450
And noble grace that dashed brute violence
With sudden adoration and blank awe?
So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 455
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, 460
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal. But, when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 465
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp 470
Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state. 475

_Sec. Bro._ How charming is divine Philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

_Eld. Bro._ List! list! I hear 480
Some far-off hallo break the silent air.

_Sec. Bro._ Methought so too; what should it be?

_Eld. Bro._ For certain,
Either some one, like us, night-foundered here,
Or else some neighbour woodman, or, at worst,
Some roving robber calling to his fellows. 485

_Sec. Bro._ Heaven keep my sister! Again, again, and near!
Best draw, and stand upon our guard.

_Eld. Bro._ I'll hallo.
If he be friendly, he comes well: if not,
Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be for us!

_Enter the ATTENDANT SPIRIT, habited like a shepherd._

That hallo I should know. What are you? Speak! 490
Come not too near; you fall on iron stakes else.

_Spir._ What voice is that? my young Lord? speak again.

_Sec. Bro._ O brother, 'tis my father's shepherd, sure.

_Eld. Bro._ Thyrsis! whose artful strains have oft delayed
The huddling brook to hear his madrigal, 495
And sweetened every musk-rose of the dale.
How camest thou here, good swain? hath any ram
Slipped from the fold, or young kid lost his dam,
Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook?
How couldst thou find this dark sequestered nook? 500

_Spir._ O my loved master's heir, and his next joy,
I came not here on such a trivial toy
As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth
Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth
That doth enrich these downs is worth a thought 505
To this my errand, and the care it brought.
But, oh! my virgin Lady, where is she?
How chance she is not in your company?

_Eld. Bro._ To tell thee sadly, Shepherd, without blame
Or our neglect, we lost her as we came. 510

_Spir._ Ay me unhappy! then my fears are true.

_Eld. Bro._ What fears, good Thyrsis? Prithee briefly shew.