6
COMUS
An old and haughty Nation proud in Arms:
Where his fair off-spring, nurs’t in Princely lore,
Are coming to attend their Fathers state
And new-entrusted Scepter; but their way
Lies through the perplex’t paths of this drear Wood,
The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandring Passinger;
And here their tender age might suffer perill,
But that, by quick command from Soveran Jove,
I was dispatcht for their defence and guard;
And listen why; for I will tell ye now
What never yet was heard in Tale or Song,
From old or modern Bard, in Hall or Bowr.
Bacchus, that first from out the purple Grape
Crush’t the sweet poyson of mis-used Wine,
After the Tuscan Mariners transform’d,
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
On Circes Iland fell: (who knows not Circe
The daughter of the Sun? Whose charmed Cup
Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a groveling Swine.)
This Nymph, that gaz’d upon his clustring locks
With Ivy berries wreath’d, and his blithe youth,
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a Son
Much like his Father, but his Mother more,
Where his fair off-spring, nurs’t in Princely lore,
Are coming to attend their Fathers state
And new-entrusted Scepter; but their way
Lies through the perplex’t paths of this drear Wood,
The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandring Passinger;
And here their tender age might suffer perill,
But that, by quick command from Soveran Jove,
I was dispatcht for their defence and guard;
And listen why; for I will tell ye now
What never yet was heard in Tale or Song,
From old or modern Bard, in Hall or Bowr.
Bacchus, that first from out the purple Grape
Crush’t the sweet poyson of mis-used Wine,
After the Tuscan Mariners transform’d,
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
On Circes Iland fell: (who knows not Circe
The daughter of the Sun? Whose charmed Cup
Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a groveling Swine.)
This Nymph, that gaz’d upon his clustring locks
With Ivy berries wreath’d, and his blithe youth,
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a Son
Much like his Father, but his Mother more,
