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.
Spirit. Back, shepherds, back! Enough your play
Till next sunshine holiday.
Here be, without duck or nod, [960]
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, [970]
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, [980]
All amidst the gardens fair
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree.
Along the crispéd shades and bowers
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 cedarn alleys fling [990]
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, [1000]
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, [1010]
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 [1020]
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.
NOTES.
[discovers], exhibits, displays. The usual sense of ‘discover’ is to find out or make known, but in Milton and Shakespeare the prefix dis- has often the more purely negative force of un-: hence discover = uncover, reveal. Comp.—
“Some high-climbing hill
Which to his eye discovers unaware
The goodly prospect of some foreign land.”