SONG III. NYMPHS and Shepherds dance no more Trip no more in twilight ranks, A better soil shall give ye thanks. Bring your flocks, and live with us; To serve the lady of this place; Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were, All Arcadia hath not seen. A beautiful river of Arcadia Presented at Ludlow Castle before John, Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales. 1634. "Comus was suggested to the Poet by the fact that the two sons and the daughter of the Earl of Bridgewater, on their return from a visit to some relations in Herefordshire, were benighted in Haywood Forest; and the Lady Alice was, for a short time, lost. The Mask was written for the Michaelmas festivities of 1634, and acted by Lord Bridgewater's children. The music composed for it was by Henry Lawes, who performed in it the part of the Spirit, or Thyrsis. He was the son of Thomas Lawes, a Vicar-Choral of Salisbury Cathedral, and was at first a chorister himself. He became finally one of the Court musicians to Charles I. Masks and music fled before the stern gloom of the Commonwealth, and Lawes was compelled to gain his living by teaching the lute. His greatest friends during this period of difficulty and poverty were the Ladies Alice and Mary Egerton. He lived to the Restoration, and composed the Coronation Anthem for Charles II. "Comus" was first published by Lawes, without Milton's name, in 1637, with a dedication to Lord Brackley. Masks were the fashion of the age; and Milton was probably called on by Lord Bridgewater to produce one, because he had already written the "Arcades" för Lady Bridgewater's mother, dy Derby, at Harefield, in Middlesex. The First Scene discovers a Wild Wood. The attendant Spirit descends or enters. BEFORE the starry threshold of Jove's court Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughtèd care 1 The Spirit is called "Dæmon" in the Cambridge MS.-WARTON, Crowded; from pesta, a crowd. Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To such my errand is; and but for such, And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns, He quarters to his blue-hair'd deities; 1 The Welsh. On Circe's island fell: who knows not Circe, And downward fell into a grovelling swine? Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus1 named: At last betakes him to this ominous wood, Offering to ev'ry weary traveller His orient liquor in a crystal glass, To quench the drouth of Phoebus, which as they taste, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, I shoot from heav'n, to give him safe convoy, Comus was the god of good cheer. He had appeared as a dramatic per sonage in one of Jonson's Masks before the Court, in 1619. Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar, 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 glistening; 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 His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream; And the slope sun his upward beam Pacing toward the other goal Of his chamber in the east. Braid your locks with rosy twine, And Advice with scrupulous head, Strict Age, and sour Severity, With their grave saws in slumber lie. 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, Now to the moon in wavering morrice' move; 1 The morice, or Moorish, dance, long a great favourite with our ancestors. was introduced by John of Gaunt it is It said, in the reign of Edward III., on his return from Spain. |