more true.
Here be grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet's good;
Sweeter yet did never crown
The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown
Than the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em.
Deign, oh fairest fair, to take 'em!
For these black-eyed Dryope
Hath often times commanded me,
With my clasped knee to climb;
See how well the lusty time
Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread.
Here be berries for a queen,
Some be red, and some be green;
These are of that luscious sweet,
The great god Pan himself doth eat;
All these, and what the woods can yield,
The hanging mountain, or the field,
I freely offer, and ere long
Will bring you more, more sweet and strong;
Till when, humbly leave I take,
Lest the great Pan do awake,
That sleeping lies in a deep glade,
Under a broad beech's shade.
I must go,--I must run
Swifter than the fiery sun.

_Clorin_. And all my fears go with thee!
What greatness or what private hidden power
Is there in me to draw submission
From this rude man and beast? sure I am mortal;
The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal,
And she that bore me mortal: Prick my hand
And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and
The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink
Makes me a-cold. My fear says I am mortal.
Yet I hare heard (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it) if I keep
My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,
Satyr, or other power, that haunts the groves,
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires,
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tempt me on
Through mire and standing pools to find my swain
Else why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity, whose herds
Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me? &c. &c.

_Beaumont and Fletcher's Works_,
(Seward's edition,) vol. iii. p. 117--121.

How we track Milton's exquisite Comus in this no less
exquisite pastoral Drama! and the imitation is so beautiful,
that t