The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems (15 page)

That to the service of this house belongs,

Who with his soft pipe
⁶⁹³
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

Of this occasion.

But I hear the tread

Of hateful steps. I must be viewless, now.

Comus enters, with a charming
⁶⁹⁴
rod in one hand, his glass

in the other. With him a rout
⁶⁹⁵
of monsters headed
⁶⁹⁶
like

sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and

women, their apparel glistening. They come in, making a

riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands.

COMUS. The star that bids
⁶⁹⁷
the shepherd fold,
⁶⁹⁸

Now the top of Heav’n doth hold,

And the gilded car of day

His glowing axle doth allay
⁶⁹⁹

In the steep Atlantic stream,

And the slope
⁷⁰⁰
sun his upward beam

Shoots against the dusky pole,

Pacing toward the other goal

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,
⁷⁰¹

Dropping
⁷⁰²
odors, dropping wine.

Rigor now is gone to bed,

And advice, with scrupulous head.

Strict age, and sour severity

With their grave saws
⁷⁰³
in slumber lie.

We that are of purer fire

Imitate the starry choir

Who in their nightly watchful spheres

Lead in swift round the months and years.

The sounds
⁷⁰⁴
and seas, with all their finny drove,
⁷⁰⁵

Now to the moon in wavering morris
⁷⁰⁶
move,

And on the tawny sands and shelves

Trip the pert
⁷⁰⁷
fairies and the dapper
⁷⁰⁸
elves.

By dimpled
⁷⁰⁹
brook and fountain brim

The wood nymphs, decked with daisies trim,

Their merry wakes
⁷¹⁰
and pastimes keep.

What has night to do with sleep?

Night has better sweets to prove:

Venus now wakes, and wakens love.

Come, let us our rites begin!

’Tis only daylight that makes sin—

Which these dun shades will ne’er report.

Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,

Dark-veil’d Cotytto,
⁷¹¹
t’whom the secret flame

Of midnight torches burns! Mysterious dame

That ne’er art called but
⁷¹²
when the dragon womb

Of Stygian darkness spits her thickest gloom

And makes one blot of all the air!

Stay thy cloudy ebon
⁷¹³
chair,

Wherein thou rid’st with Hecat,
⁷¹⁴
and befriend

Us, thy vowèd priests, till utmost end

Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,

Ere the blabbing
⁷¹⁵
eastern scout,
⁷¹⁶

The nice
⁷¹⁷
morn on th’ Indian steep

From her cabined loop-hole peep,

And to the tell-tale sun descry
⁷¹⁸

Our conceal’d solemnity.

Come, knit hands and beat the ground

In a light fantastic round!

The measure.
⁷¹⁹

Break off, break off! I feel the different pace

Of some chaste footing near about this ground.

Run to your shrouds,
⁷²⁰
within these brakes
⁷²¹
and trees:

Our number may affright. Some virgin, sure

(For so I can distinguish, by mine art),

Benighted
⁷²²
in these woods. Now to my charms,

And to my wily trains.
⁷²³
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 spongey
⁷²⁴
air,

Of power to cheat the eye with blear
⁷²⁵
illusion

And give it false presentments,
⁷²⁶
lest the place

And my quaint
⁷²⁷
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

And well-placed words of glozing
⁷²⁸
courtesy,

Baited with reasons not implausible,

Wind me into the easy-hearted man,

And hug him into snares. When once her eye

Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,

I shall appear some harmless villager

Whom thrift
⁷²⁹
keeps up about
⁷³⁰
his country gear.

But here she comes. I fairly
⁷³¹
step aside

And hearken, if I may, her business here.

The lady enters.

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
⁷³²
flute or gamesome
⁷³³
pipe

Stirs up amongst the loose, unlettered hinds,
⁷³⁴

When for their teeming flocks and granges full

In wanton
⁷³⁵
dance they praise the bounteous Pan

And thank the gods amiss.
⁷³⁶
I should be loath

To meet the rudeness
⁷³⁷
and swill’d insolence

Of such late wassailers.
⁷³⁸
Yet where else

Shall I inform my unacquainted feet

In the blind maze of this tangled Wood?

My brothers, when they saw me wearied out

With this long way, resolving here to lodge

Under the spreading favor 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 gray-hooded ev’n

Like a sad votarist
⁷³⁹
in palmer’s
⁷⁴⁰
weeds
⁷⁴¹

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus’ wain.
⁷⁴²

But where they are, and why they came not back,

Is now the labor of my thoughts. ’Tis likeliest

They had engaged their wand’ring steps too far,

And envious darkness, ere they could return,

Had stol’n 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 Heav’n, 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 ev’n now the tumult of loud mirth

Was rife
⁷⁴³
and perfect
⁷⁴⁴
in my list’ning ear.

Yet nought but single
⁷⁴⁵
darkness do I find.

What might this be? A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes and beck’ning 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
⁷⁴⁶
champion, conscience—

O welcome, pure-eyed faith, white-handed hope,

Thou flittering Angel girt with golden wings!

And thou, unblemished form of chastity,

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
⁷⁴⁷
guardian, if need were,

To keep my life and honor 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 cell

By slow Maeander’s
⁷⁴⁸
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
⁷⁴⁹
are?

O if thou have

Hid them in some flow’ry cave,

Tell me but where,

Sweet queen of parley,
⁷⁵⁰
daughter of the sphere,

So may’st thou be translated to the skies,

And give resounding grace to all Heav’n’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
⁷⁵¹
air

To testify his hidden residence!

How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,

At every fall
⁷⁵²
smoothing the raven down
⁷⁵³

Of darkness, till she smiled. I have oft heard

My mother, Circe, with the Sirens three,

Amidst the flow’ry-kirtled Naiades,
⁷⁵⁴

Culling their potent
⁷⁵⁵
herbs and baleful drugs,

Who as they sung would take the prisoned soul

And lap it in Elysium. Scylla
⁷⁵⁶
wept

And chid her barking waves into attention,

And fell Charybdis
⁷⁵⁷
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
⁷⁵⁸
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
⁷⁵⁹
or Silvan,
⁷⁶⁰
by blest song

Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog