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Smear'd with gums of glutinous heat,
I touch, with chaste palms moist and cold :-
Now the spell hath lost his hold:
And I must haste, ere morning hour,
To wait in Amphitrite's bower.

SABRINA descends, and the LADY rises out of her seat.

hills ;

Sp. Virgin, daughter of Locrine
Sprung of old Anchises' line,
May thy brimmed waves, for this,
Their full tribute never miss,
From a thousand petty rills,
That tumble down the snowy
Summer drouth, or singed air,
Never scorch thy tresses fair,
Nor wet October's torrent flood
Thy molten chrystal fill with mud;
May thy billows roll ashore
The beryl, and the golden ore;
May thy lofty head be crowned
With many a tower and terrace round,
And here and there, thy banks upon,
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.
Come, lady, while Heaven lends us grace,
Let us fly this cursed place,

Lest the sorcerer us entice,
With some other new device.
Not a waste, or needless sound,
Till we come to holier ground;
I shall be your faithful guide,
Through this gloomy covert wide,
And not many furlongs thence
Is your father's residence,
Where this night are met, in state,
Many a friend to gratulate
His wish'd presence; and, beside,
All the swains that there abide,
With jigs and rural dance, resort;
We shall catch them at their sport,
And our sudden coming there

Will double all their mirth and cheer;
Come, let us haste, the stars grow high
But night sits monarch yet, in the mid sky.

The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow town, and the President's castle; then come in Country Dancers ; after them the ATTENDANT SPIRIT, with the Two BROTHERS, and the LADY.

SONG.

Sp. Back, Shepherds, back, enough your play, Till next sun-shine holiday;

Here be, without duck or nod

Other trippings to be trod

Of lighter toes, and such court guise,

As Mercury did first devise,

With the mincing Dryades,

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;
Here behold, so goodly grown,
Three fair branches of your own:
Heaven hath timely tried their youth,
Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays,
With a crown of deathless praise.
To triumph in victorious dance
O'er sensual Folly, and Intemperance.

The dances ended, the SPIRIT epiloguises.
Sp. To the ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes, that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky:
There I suck the liquid air,
All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three,
That sing about the golden tree:
Along the crisped shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring;
The graces, and the rosy-bosom'd Hours,
Thither all their bounties bring;
There eternal summer dwells,
And west-winds, with musky wing,
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and Cassia's balmy smells.
Iris there, with humid bow,
Waters the odorous banks, that blow

Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled 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,
Waxing well of his deep wound,
In slumber soft, and, on the ground,
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen:
But far above in spangled sheen
Celestial Cupid, her famed son advanced,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced,
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent, the gods among,
Make her his eternal bride;

And from her fair unspotted side,
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.

But now my task is smoothly done, I can fly, or I can run

Quickly, to the green earth's end,
Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar, as soon,
To the corners of the moon.

Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her

THE END OF COMUS.

LYCIDAS.

In this MONODY, the author bewails a learned friend,* unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy then in their highth.

YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-sere,
I come to pluck your berries, harsh and crude,
And, with forced fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves, before the mellowing year:
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,
So may some gentle Muse,

With lucky words, favour my destined urn;
And, as he passes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.

* Edward King, Esq., the son of Sir John King, knight, secretary for Ireland. He was sailing from Chester to Ireland, on a visit to his friends in that country, when, in calm weather, not far from the English coast, the ship struck upon a rock, and suddenly sunk to the bottom with all that were on board, August 10, 1637. Mr. King was a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd,
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard,
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks, with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose, at evening, bright,
Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, [wheel.
Temper'd to the oaten flute,

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns, with cloven heel,
From the glad sound would not be absent long,
And old Damotas loved to hear our song.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Thee, shepherd, thee, the woods, and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine overgrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.

The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen,

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. [deep
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream:
Ay me! I fondly dream.

Had ye been there, for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself, that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal Nature did lament,
When by the rout, that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus, to the Lesbian shore?

Alas! what boots it, with incessant care,
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,
That last infirmity of noble mind,

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