I have kept, of precious cure; Thrice upon thy rubied lip: Next this marble venom'd seat, I touch with chaste palms moist and cold :— Now the spell hath lost his hold; And I must haste, ere morning hour, To wait in Amphitrite's bower. SABRINA descends, and the LADY rises out of her Seat. Spi. Virgin, daughter of Locrine,1 Sprung of old Anchises' line, May thy brimmed waves for this With groves of myrrh and cinnamon ! Come, Lady, while Heaven lends us grace, Let us fly this cursed place, Not a waste or needless sound Till we come to holier ground; 'Locrine:' descended from Eneas, the son of Anchises. I shall be your faithful guide Will double all their mirth and chere: 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. Spi. Back, Shepherds, back; enough your play, Till next sun-shine holiday: Here be, without duck1 or nod, 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; 'Duck:' bow. Here behold so goodly grown To triumph in victorious dance O'er sensual Folly and Intemperance. The Dances being ended, the SPIRIT epiloguizes. Spi. To the ocean now I fly, And those happy climes that lie Of Hesperus,1 and his daughters three About the cedars' alleys fling Nard and Cassia's balmy smells. Waters the odorous banks, that blow 16 'Hesperus:' see Ovid, Met. ix.-2 Purfled: fringed. Where young In slumber soft, and on the ground Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend; Mortals, that would follow me, Heaven itself would stoop to her. 1 'Assyrian queen:' Venus.- 'Cupid' and 'Psyche:' see Emerson's Essay on Love.'-3 'Sphery chime:' music of spheres. L ARCADES.1 PART OF A Mask, PRESENTED AT HAREFIELD, BEFORE THE COUNTESS-DOWAGER OF DERBY. 1. SONG. LOOK, Nymphs and Shepherds, look, What sudden blaze of majesty Is that which we from hence descry, This, this is she 2 To whom our vows and wishes bend; Fame, that, her high worth to raise, Less than half we find exprest Envy bid conceal the rest. Arcades: the fragment of a larger performance, the rest of which was probably in prose. It was performed at Harefield before the Countess of Derby, its heroine, not later than 1636. She was married at the time to Lord Chancellor Egerton, and died in 1635-6. She was related to Edmund Spenser, who celebrated her, when a widow, in his 'Colin Clout's come home again,' as Amaryllis. This is she:' namely, the Countess of Derby. 26 |