58
COMUS
The attendant Spirit comes in.
Spirit
What, have you let the false enchanter scape?
O, ye mistook; ye should have snatcht his wand
And bound him fast; without his rod revers’t,
And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the Lady that sits here
In stony fetters fixt and motionless;
Yet stay, be not disturb’d; now I bethink me,
Som other means I have which may be us’d,
Which once of Meliboeus old I learnt,
The soothest Shepherd that ere pip’t on plains.
There is a gentle Nymph not farr from hence,
That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream
Sabrina is her name; a Virgin pure;
Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,
That had the Scepter from his father Brute.
The guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit
Of her enraged stepdam Guendolen,
Commended her fair innocence to the flood
That stay’d her flight with his cross-flowing course.
The water Nymphs, that in the bottom plaid,
Held up their pearled wrists and took her in,
O, ye mistook; ye should have snatcht his wand
And bound him fast; without his rod revers’t,
And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the Lady that sits here
In stony fetters fixt and motionless;
Yet stay, be not disturb’d; now I bethink me,
Som other means I have which may be us’d,
Which once of Meliboeus old I learnt,
The soothest Shepherd that ere pip’t on plains.
There is a gentle Nymph not farr from hence,
That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream
Sabrina is her name; a Virgin pure;
Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,
That had the Scepter from his father Brute.
The guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit
Of her enraged stepdam Guendolen,
Commended her fair innocence to the flood
That stay’d her flight with his cross-flowing course.
The water Nymphs, that in the bottom plaid,
Held up their pearled wrists and took her in,
