FullReads

[He sees Clorin and stands amazed.]

But behold a fairer sight!
By that heavenly form of thine,
Brightest fair, thou art divine,
Sprung from great, immortal race
Of the Gods; for in thy face
Shines more awful majesty,
Than dull, weak mortality
Dare with misty eyes behold
And live! Therefore on this mould
Slowly do I bend my knee,
In worship of thy deity.
Deign it, goddess, from my hand
To receive whate’er this land,
From her fertile womb doth send
Of her choice fruits; and but lend
Belief to that the Satyr tells:
Fairer by the famous wells
To this present day ne’er grew,
Never better nor more true.
Here be grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet’s good;
Sweeter yet did never crown
The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown
Than the squirrel whose teeth crack ’em.
Deign, oh fairest fair, to take ’em!
For these black-eyed Dryope
Hath often times commanded me,
With my clasped knee to climb;
See how well the lusty time
Hath deck’d their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread.
Here be berries for a queen,
Some be red, and some be green;
These are of that luscious sweet,
The great god Pan himself doth eat;
All these, and what the woods can yield,
The hanging mountain, or the field,
I freely offer, and ere long
Will bring you more, more sweet and strong;
Till when, humbly leave I take,
Lest the great Pan do awake,
That sleeping lies in a deep glade,
Under a broad beech’s shade.
I must go,–I must run
Swifter than the fiery sun.

Clorin. And all my fears go with thee!
What greatness or what private hidden power
Is there in me to draw submission
From this rude man and beast? sure I am mortal;
The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal,
And she that bore me mortal: Prick my hand
And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and
The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink
Makes me a-cold. My fear says I am mortal.
Yet I hare heard (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it) if I keep
My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,
Satyr, or other power, that haunts the groves,
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires,
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tempt me on
Through mire and standing pools to find my swain
Else why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity, whose herds
Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me? etc. etc.

Beaumont and Fletcher’s Works,
(Seward’s edition,) vol. iii. p. 117–121.

How we track Milton’s exquisite Comus in this no less exquisite pastoral Drama! and the imitation is so beautiful, that the perception of the plagiarism rather increases than diminishes the pleasure with which we read either deathless work. Republican although he were, the great poet sits a throned king upon Parnassus, privileged to cull flowers where he listeth in right of his immortal laurel- crown.

Phoebe loved flowers; and from the earliest tuft of violets ensconced under the sunny southern hedge, to the last lingering sprig of woodbine shaded by some time-hallowed oak, the blossoms of the meadow and the coppice were laid under contribution for her posies.

Phoebe had her own little garden; and to fill that garden, Jesse was never weary of seeking after the roots of such wild plants as he himself thought pretty, or such as he found (one can hardly tell how) were considered by better judges to be worthy of a place in the parterre. The different orchises, for instance, the white and lilac primrose, the golden oxslip, the lily of the valley, the chequered fritillary, which blows so freely along the banks of the Kennett, and the purple campanula which covers with equal profusion the meadows of the Thames, all found their way to Phoebe’s flower-plats. He brought her in summer evenings glow-worms enough to form a constellation on the grass; and would spend half a July day in chasing for her some glorious insect, dragon-fly, or bee-bird, or golden beetle, or gorgeous butterfly. He not only bestowed upon her sloes, and dew-berries, and hazel-nuts “brown as the squirrel whose teeth crack ’em,” but caught for her the squirrel itself. He brought her a whole litter of dormice, and tamed for her diversion a young magpie, whose first effort at flattery was “Pretty Phoebe!”