ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

THE ONCE AND FUTURE POET
Thus I sprinkle on thy breast
Drops that from my fountain pure
I have kept of precious cure,
and again as a solemn tribute the Attendant Spirit pays to Sabrina,
Virgin, daughter of Locrine
Sprung of old Anchises’ line,
May thy brimmed waves for this
Their full tribute never miss,
178
(ll. 911–13)
(ll. 922–5)
and finally as a way for the Spirit to announce his Ariel-like departure to the
Garden of the Hesperides,
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.
(ll. 976–80)
As for song—central to the masque tradition and always of interest to the poet—
Milton reshaped the jubilantly archaic, rustic play of the Nativity Ode in a more
sophisticated courtly direction. For the two female parts, he invented pastoral
lyrics of exquisite beauty and color (in the imagistic sense as well): Lady Alice’s
plaintive song to Echo asking help to find her brothers, beginning,
Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv’st unseen
Within thy airy shell
By slow Maeander’s margent green,
And in the violet-embroider’d vale
Where the love-lorn Nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad Song mourneth well,
(ll. 230–5)
and, much later, Sabrina’s distantly answering song accompanying her entrance,
By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank,
My sliding Chariot stays,
Thick set with Agate and the azurn sheen
Of Turquoise blue and Em’rald green
That in the channel strays,