Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telema

chus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle

Well loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labor, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,

That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads, — you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon

climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order, smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy

Isles,

Or a mere fiction of what never was? For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly uni

verse

In love and holy passion, shall find these

A simple produce of the common day.

I, long before the blissful hour arrives,

Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse

Of this great consummation: — and, by words

Which speak of nothing more than what we are,

Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep

Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain

To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual Mind (And the progressive powers, perhaps no less,

Of the whole species) to the external World

Is fitted and how exquisitely,

song,

From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape

Crushed the sweet poison of misusèd wine,

After the Tuscan mariners transformed,

Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,

On Circé's island fell: who knows not Circé,

The daughter of the sun, whose charmed cup

Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,

And downward fell into a grovelling swine?

This Nymph that gazed upon his clustering locks

With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth,

Had by him, ere he parted thence, a

That to the service of this house belongs,

Who with his soft pipe, and smoothdittied song,

Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,

And hush the waving woods, nor of less faith,

And in this office of his mountain watch,

Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid

Of this occasion. But I hear the tread

Of hateful steps; I must be viewless

now.

COMUS enters with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the other; with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel glistering; they come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands.

Comus. The star that bids the
shepherd fold,

Now the top of heaven doth hold;
And the gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream;
And the slope sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing toward the other goal
Of his chamber in the east.
Meanwhile welcome Joy, and Feast,
Midnight Shout and Revelry,
Tipsy Dance and Jollity.
Braid your locks with rosy twine,
Dropping odors, dropping wine.
Rigor now has gone to bed,
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sour Severity,
With their grave saws in slumber lie.
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the starry quire,
Who in their nightly watchful
spheres

Lead in swift round the months and

That ne'er art called, but when the dragon womb

Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,

And makes one blot of all the air;
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
Wherein thou rid'st with Hecate, and
befriend

Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,

Ere the babbling eastern scout,

The nice Morn, on the Indian steep
From her cabined loophole peep,
And to the telltale sun descry
Our concealed solemnity.

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground

In a light fantastic round.

THE MEASURE.

Break off, break off, I feel the different pace

Of some chaste footing near about this ground.

Run to your shrouds, within these brakes and trees;

Our number may affright: Some virgin sure

(For so I can distinguish by mine art)

Benighted in these woods. Now to my charms,

And to my wily trains; I shall ere long

Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed

About my mother Circé. Thus I hurl

My dazzling spells into the spungy air,

Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,

And give it false presentments, lest the place

And my quaint habits breed astonishment,

And put the damsel to suspicious flight,

Which must not be, for that's against