Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise On the lawns, and on the leas.1 [This second Song presents them to their Father and Mother.] Noble lord, and lady bright, I have brought ye new delight; To triumph in victorious dance O'er sensual folly and intemperance. [The dances ended, the SPIRIT epiloguises. SPIRIT. To the ocean now I fly,2 And those happy climes that lie Of Hesperus, and his daughters three, And west winds, with musky wing, About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Waters the odorous banks, that blow 1 Pastures, corn-fields. 2 A paraphrase of Ariel's song in the "Tempest: " "Where the bee sucks, there lurk I." Flowers of more mingled hue Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, Mortals, that would follow me, Heaven itself would stoop to her. 1 Flourished, embroided with the needle. 2 Venus, so called, because she was first worshipped by the Assyrians. 3" Comus," observes Hallam," was sufficient to convince any one of taste and feeling, that a great poet had arisen in England, and one partly formed in a different school from his contemporaries. Many of them had produced highly beautiful and imaginative passages; but none had evinced so classical a judgment, none had aspired to so regular a perfection. Jonson had learned much from the ancients, but there was a grace in their best models which he did not quite attain. Neither his 'Sad Shepherd,' nor the 'Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, have the elegance or dignity of 'Comus.' A noble virgin and her young brothers, by whom this masque was originally represented, required an elevation, a purity, a sort of severity of sentiment which no one in that age could have given but Milton. He avoided, and nothing loth, the more festive notes which dramatic poetry was XVII LYCIDAS. [In this monody the author bewails a learned friend, Mr. Edward King, who was unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637, and by occasion foretels the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.] YET once more, O ye laurels! and once more I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, Shatter leaves before the mellowing year. your Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, wont to mingle with its serious strain. But for this he was compensated by the brightest hues of fancy, and the sweetest melody of song. In 'Comus' we find nothing prosaic or feeble, no false taste in the incidents, and not much in the language, nothing over which we should desire to pass on a second perusal. The want of what we may call personality, none of the characters having names, except Comus himself, who is a very indefinite being, and the absence of all positive attributes of time and place, enhance the ideality of the fiction by a certain indistinctness not unpleasing to the imagination." 1 "It has been said, I think very fairly, that Lycidas is a good test of real feeling for what is peculiarly called poetry. Many, or perhaps we might say most readers, do not taste its excellence; nor does it follow that they may not greatly admire Pope and Dryden, or even Virgil and Homer. It is, however, somewhat remarkable, that Johnson, who has committed his critical reputation by the most contemptuous depreciation of this poem, had, in an earlier part of his life, selected the tenth Eclogue of Virgil for peculiar praise; the tenth Eclogue, which, beautiful as it is, belongs to the same class of pastoral Begin then, sisters, of the sacred well,1 That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; So may some gentle muse With lucky words favour my destined urn, And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud: 3 Toward Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel But oh, the heavy change, now thou art gone, The willows, and the hazel copses green, and personal allegory, and requires the same sacrifice of reasoning criticism, as the Lycidas itself. In the age of Milton, the poetical world had been accustomed by the Italian and Spanish writers to a more abundant use of allegory than has been pleasing to their posterity; but Lycidas is not so much in the nature of an allegory as of a masque; the characters pass before our eyes in imagination, as on the stage; they are chiefly mythological, but not creations of the poet. Our sympathy with the fate of Lycidas may not be much stronger than for the desertion of Gallus by his mistress; but many poems will yield an exquisite pleasure to the imagination that produce no emotion in the heart; or none at least, except through associations independent of the subject."-Hallam. 1 Fountain. 2 So the muse is made masculine in Samson Agonistes, ver. 973. 3 Drawing towards the west. 4 He probably means Dr. William Chappel, who had been tutor to them both, and afterwards became Bishop of Cork and Ross. Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear. Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep Nor yet where Deva2 spreads her wizard stream: Had ye been there, for what could that have done? What could the muse herself that Orpheus bore, The mus herself for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar, Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise To scorn delights, and live laborious days, Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise," Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; 66 Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed." The Isle of Anglesea. 2 The River Dee. The word Deva is supposed to mean divine. |