4
COMUS
Strive to keep up a frail and Feaverish being,
Unmindfull of the crown that Vertue gives,
After this mortal change, to her true Servants
Amongst the enthron’d gods on Sainted seats.
Yet som there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that Golden Key
That ope’s the Palace of Eternity:
To such my errand is; and but for such,
I would not soil these pure Ambrosial weeds
With the rank vapours of this Sin-worn mould.
But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
Of every salt Flood and each ebbing Stream,
Took in by lot, ’twixt high, and neather Jove,
Imperial rule of all the Sea-girt Iles
That, like to rich and various gemms, inlay
The unadorned boosom of the Deep;
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
By course commits to severall government,
And gives them leave to wear their Saphire crowns,
And weild their little tridents. But this Ile,
The greatest and the best of all the main,
He quarters to his blu-hair’d deities;
And all this tract that fronts the falling Sun
A noble Peer of mickle trust and power
Has in his charge, with temper’d awe to guide
Unmindfull of the crown that Vertue gives,
After this mortal change, to her true Servants
Amongst the enthron’d gods on Sainted seats.
Yet som there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that Golden Key
That ope’s the Palace of Eternity:
To such my errand is; and but for such,
I would not soil these pure Ambrosial weeds
With the rank vapours of this Sin-worn mould.
But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
Of every salt Flood and each ebbing Stream,
Took in by lot, ’twixt high, and neather Jove,
Imperial rule of all the Sea-girt Iles
That, like to rich and various gemms, inlay
The unadorned boosom of the Deep;
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
By course commits to severall government,
And gives them leave to wear their Saphire crowns,
And weild their little tridents. But this Ile,
The greatest and the best of all the main,
He quarters to his blu-hair’d deities;
And all this tract that fronts the falling Sun
A noble Peer of mickle trust and power
Has in his charge, with temper’d awe to guide
