L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas

Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence

With vizored falsehood and base forgery?

And would'st thou seek again to trap me here

With liquorish baits, fit to ensnare a brute?

Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets,

I would not taste thy treasonous offer. None

But such as are good men can give good things;

And that which is not good is not delicious

To a well–governed and wise appetite.

COMUS. O foolishness of men! that lend their ears

To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,

And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,

Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence!

Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth

With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,

Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,

Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,

But all to please and sate the curious taste?

And set to work millions of spinning worms,

That in their green shops weave the smooth–haired silk,

To deck her sons; and, that no corner might

Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins

She hutched the all–worshipped ore and precious gems,

To store her children with. If all the world

Should, in a pet of temperance, feed on pulse,

Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,

The All–giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised,

Not half his riches known and yet despised;

And we should serve him as a grudging master,

As a penurious niggard of his wealth,

And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons,

Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,

And strangled with her waste fertility:

The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes,

The herds would over–multitude their lords;

The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought diamonds

Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep,

And so bestud with stars, that they below

Would grow inured to light, and come at last

To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.

List, Lady; be not coy, and be not cozened

With that same vaunted name, Virginity.

Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded,

But must be current; and the good thereof

Consists in mutual and partaken bliss,

Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself.

If you let slip time, like a neglected rose

It withers on the stalk with languished head.

Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown

In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities,

Where most may wonder at the workmanship.

It is for homely features to keep home;

They had their name thence: coarse complexions

And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply

The sampler, and to tease the huswife's wool.

What need a vermeil–tinctured lip for that,

Love–darting eyes, or tresses like the morn?

There was another meaning in these gifts;

Think what, and be advised; you are but young yet.

LADY. I had not thought to have unlocked my lips

In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler

Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes,

Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.

I hate when vice can bolt her arguments

And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.

Impostor! do not charge most innocent Nature,

As if she would her children should be riotous

With her abundance. She, good cateress,

Means her provision only to the good,

That live according to her sober laws,

And holy dictate of spare Temperance.

If every just man that now pines with want

Had but a moderate and beseeming share

Of that which lewdly–pampered Luxury

Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,

Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed

In unsuperfluous even proportion,

And she no whit encumbered with her store;

And then the Giver would be better thanked,

His praise due paid: for swinish gluttony

Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast,

But with besotted base ingratitude

Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on

Or have I said enow? To him that dares

Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words

Against the sun–clad power of chastity

Fain would I something say;—yet to what end?

Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend

The sublime notion and high mystery

That must be uttered to unfold the sage

And serious doctrine of Virginity;

And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know

More happiness than this thy present lot.

Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric,

That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence;

Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced.

Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth

Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits

To such a flame of sacred vehemence

That dumb things would be moved to sympathise,

And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake,

Till all thy magic structures, reared so high,

Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head.

COMUS. She fables not. I feel that I do fear

Her words set off by some superior power;

And, though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew

Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove

Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus

To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble,

And try her yet more strongly.—Come, no more!

This is mere moral babble, and direct

Against the canon laws of our foundation.

I must not suffer this; yet 't is but the lees

And settlings of a melancholy blood.

But this will cure all straight; one sip of this