Here be without duck or nod Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise As Mercury did first devise With the mincing Dryades On the lawns, and on the leas. 970 975 This second Song presents them to their Father and Mother. Noble Lord and Lady bright, Heaven hath timely tried their youth, 980 on the left bank of the river Amazon, looking south, and situate a little above the prototype of the Peer himself, as drawn in fig. 181. (976) From the brightness mentioned here, and the new delight of the next line, we are to understand that summer, with all its brilliancy, is now come. (980) This line implies that the brothers form a sign in the heavens, the Gemini. Their faith, their patience, and their truth, To triumph in victorious dance O'er sensual folly and intemperance. (983) The crown alluded to here is drawn in Fig. 188, DO and comprizes (according to its prototype) the whole gulf of the West Indies; the children are sent with it, because their prototypes are constituted by the same identical space. 985 The Dances ended, the Spirit epiloguizes. Spir. To the ocean now I fly, And those happy climes that lie (986) As the fables mentioned in this epilogue of the Attendant Spirit have no absolute connection with that part of the subject of the poem, which has been mainly considered above, all that is necessary to observe upon the epilogue is, that besides the general reference which it undoubtedly has to South America, it seems also by the mention of gardens (as alluding obliquely to le Jardin de la Reine;) golden, (to the gold-producing country of Mexico ;) flowers, (to the neighbouring country of Florida ;) ears, (to the ear-lac ;) queen (to the quina, or quinquina;) and by the mention of twins (as alluding to the sign of Gemini ;) to involve an artful and disguised recapitulation of all the principal subjects of the poem. To all the editions of this poem there is prefixed a letter of dedication (printed below)* as to which Where day never shuts his eye, I consider the name of the party to whom it is addressed, the Lord Brackly, heir of Lord Bridgwater, to contain an oblique intimation, that *To the Right Honourable John Lord Viscount Brackly, Son and Heir Apparent to the Earl of Bridgwater, &c. MY LORD, THIS poem, which received its first occasion of birth from yourself and others of your noble family, and much honour from your own person in the performance, now returns again to make a final dedication of itself to you. Although not openly acknowledged by the author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired, that the often copying it hath tired my pen, to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view; and now to offer it up in all rightful devotion to those fair hopes and rare endowments of your much promising youth, which give a full assurance, to all that know you, of a future excellence. Live, sweet Lord, to be the honour of your There I suck the liquid air All amidst the gardens fair 990 brackish water, or bilgewater, (as brackish water is often called) is the basis of all the enigmas of the poem, being the legitimate cause of the diseases in question there; though (as insinuated in the second passage of the dedication) not commonly imagined to be so. The names of the other chief persons who presented the mask, the Egertons, if supposed to be derived from aigre, may suggest the same idea as that of Brackly; and the name of Lawes subscribed to the dedication, involves a sort of pun upon Lues, the general name for any infectious fever. The Mask's name, and receive this as your own, from the hands of him, who hath, by many favours, been long obliged to your most honoured parents, and as in this representation your Attendant Thyrsis, so now in all real expression, Your faithful and most obedient Servant, H. LAWES. 1 |