Next this marble venomed seat,
Smeared with gums of glut'nous 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 Amphitritè's bow'r.

Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of her seat

Spirit. Virgin, daughter of Locrine,

Sprung of old Anchises' line,

May thy brimmèd waves for this

Their full tribute never miss

From a thousand petty rills,
That tumble down the snowy hills:
Summer drouth, or singèd air,
Never scorch thy tresses fair,
Nor wet October's torrent flood
Thy molten crystal fill with mud;
May thy billows roll ashore
The beryl and the golden ore;
May thy lofty head be crowned
With many a tow'r and terrace round,
And here and there thy banks upon
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon !

Come, Lady, while Heav'n lends us grace,

Let us fly this cursed place,
Lest the Sorc'rer 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 wished 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

SPIRIT'S SONG

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 ;
Heav'n 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 epiloguizes

Spirit. 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 Hesp'rus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree :
Along the crispèd shades and bow'rs
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring ;
The Graces, and the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Thither all their bounties bring;
There eternal Summer dwells,
And west-winds, with musky wing,
About the cedars' alleys fling
Nard and Cassia's balmy smells.
Iris there with humid bow

Waters the od’rous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can show ;
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 th' Assyrian Queen: 1
But far above in spangled sheen
Celestial Cupid, her famed son advanced,
Holds his dear Psychè sweet entranced,
After her wand'ring labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,

And from her fair unspotted side

1 Venus; so called because she was identified with the Assyrian Astarte.

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 bowed 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,

Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

After the production of "Comus" Milton's poetic powers subsided for a time, though he continued his studies with unabated enthusiasm. Not that he had by any means abandoned the thought of poetry as his true career. Far from it. The determination to devote himself to some great work which should make his name immortal was year by year growing upon him. But for the moment he did not feel himself ready."Hear me, Theoditus," he writes to Diodati, "but in your ear, lest I blush; and allow me for a little to speak big words to you. Do you ask me what I am thinking of? So may the good God help me, of Immortality. But what am I doing? I am pluming my wings and preparing to fly; but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to bear it aloft." What came of this now clearly conceived ambition we shall learn in the sequel. Meanwhile, as the

same letter goes on to tell us, he was beginning to feel cramped and ill at ease at Horton. His mother had died a few months before-in April 1637-and perhaps her death had something to do with his newly awakened desire for change. In the country, as he had now come to realise, he was "buried in obscurity"; he needed a larger life and more varied companionship. For this reason, as he further informs his friend, he was planning to migrate to town, and to seek there a convenient lodging in “some inn of the lawyers," where the social surroundings would be more stimulating, and where at the same time he would find quietude, seclusion, and "a pleasant and shady walk" for his hours of meditation and exercise.

This was written in September 1637, about a month, we may note in passing, after Ben Jonson had been laid to rest in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Almost immediately after this, though the great flight of which he had spoken was not even attempted, a sad occasion inspired him suddenly and unexpectedly to further poetic effort. The poem which he now produced was a very different thing indeed from the mighty epic which he was already contemplating. But in the valuation of art we think little of mere bulk; and "Lycidas,” an elegy of under two hundred lines, is still one of the glories of English literature.

Among Milton's chief companions at Christ's College had been a young man, some three years his junior, named Edward King. A youth of