The Canterbury tales and Faerie queene &c., &c., &c., ed. for popular perusal with current illustrations and explanatory notes, by D. Laing Purves.

424 THE FAERIE QUEEN. [BOOK H1.
Nor lend we leisure to his idle toy: It sited 8 was in fruitful soil of old,
But, if I catch him in this compan3, And girt in with two walls on either side,
By Stygian lake I vow, whose sad annoy The one of iron, th' other of bright gold,
The gods do dread, he dearly shall abye: 1 That none might thorough break, nor overstride:
I'1 clip his wanton wings, that he no more shall And double gates it had which open'd wide,
fly." By which both in and out men mighten pass;.
Th' one fair and fresh, the other old and dried:
~Whom when as Venus saw so sore displeas'd,r of tm w,
Old Genius the porter of them was,
She inly sorry was, and gan relent
She inly sorry was, and gan relent Old Genius, the which a double nature has.9
What she had said: so her she soon appeas'd
With sugar'd words, and gentle blandishment, He letteth in, he letteth out, to wend,l1
Which as a fountain from her sweet lips went All that to come into the world desire:
And welled goodly forth, that in short space A thousand thousand naked babes attend
She was well pleas'd, and forth her damsels sent About him day and night, which do require
Through all the woods, to search from place to That he with fleshly weeds would them attire:
place Such as him list, such as eternal fate
If any track of him or tidings they might trace. Ordained hath, he clothes with sinful mire,1
And sendeth forth to live in mortal state,
Diana herself went with Venus "to seek the Till they again return back by the hinder gate.
fugitive both far and near;" and the pair came
P. >.,'.... After that they again returned been,
upon the fqir Chrysogone, who, in her sleep, hfter that t agan retrned be n,
unwares had borne two babes as fair as spring- ey in tt Gden pnted be a n,
And grow afresh, as they had never seen
ing day." "Unwares she them conceiv'd, un- y c n nr m
wares she bore; she bore withouten pain, that ome tousan years so o tey tere remain
she conceiv'd w pleasue. T g Some thousand years so do they there remain,
she conceiv'd withouten pleasure." The god-l
desses, after an interval of speechless wonder- And then of him eclad with otherhue,
Or sent into the changeful world again,
ment, agreed not to awake the sleeper "but Or sent into the chaneful world again,
from her loving side the tender babes to take." Till thither they return where first they grew:
Phoebe carried one to a nymph, "to be upbrought o, like a wheel, around they run from old to
in perfect maidenhead," and named her Bel- new.
phoebe; Venus took the other far away, "to Nor needs there gardener to set or sow,
be upbrought in goodly womanhead," and called To plant or prune; for of their own accord
her Amoretta, to comfort herself for the absence All things, as they created were, do grow,
of her little son. And yet remember well the mighty word
Which first was spoken by th' Almighty Lord,
She brought her to her joyous Paradise,2 That bade them to increase and multiply:
Where most she wons 3 when she on earth does Nor do they need with water of the ford,l3
dwell, Or of the clouds, to moisten their roots dry;
So fair a place as Nature can devise: For in themselves eternal moisture they imply.14
Whether in Paphos, or Citheron hill,
Or it in Cnidus be, I wot 4 not well; Infinite shapes of creatures there are bred,
Buit well I wot by trial, that this same And uncouth forms, which none yet ever knew:
But well I wot by trial, that this same e s i
All other pleasant places doth excel, A
And callid is, by her lost lover's name, Set by itself, and rank'd in comely rew; 15
The Garden of Adonis,5 far renown'd by fame. Some fit for reasonable souls t' indue; 16
Some made for beasts, some made for birds to
In that same garden all the goodly flow'rs wear;
Wherewith Dame Nature doth her beautify, And all the fruitful spawn of fishes' hue i7
And decks the garlands of her paramours, In endless ranks along enranged were,
Are fetch'd: there is the first seminary That seem'd the ocean could not contain them
Of all things that are born to live and die, there.
According to their kinds. Long work it were Daily they grow, and daily forth are sent
Here to account the endless progen Into the world, it to replenish more;
Of all the weeds 6 that bud and blossom there; Yet is the stock not lessened nor spent,
But so much asdoth need must needsbe counted7 But still remains in everlasting store
here. As it at first created was of yore:
1 Suffer for it. the invocation to "Alma Venus," with which the first
2 The word is here used in its original sense of any book "De Rerum Natura" opens.
garden or pleasure-ground; Greek, rcapacet.&os, re- 6 To be here understood of plants generally, not
presenting the Sanscrit " paradesa." merely of such as are noxious or useless.
3 Resides. 4 Know. 7 Recounted. 8 Situated.
5 Adonis represents the reproductive principle of 9 In the twelfth canto of the second book (page 404),
existence, the operation of which was typified in his the porter at the gate of Acrasia's Bower is also called
alternate sojourn of half the year with Proserpine and Genius, but with express distinction from " that celeshalf with Venus-half in the region of darkness and tial Power, to whom the care of life, and generation of
decay, half in the region of fructifying light and fertile all that lives, pertains in charge particular." Genius
life. The Garden of Adonis, or rather the Garden of here is the protecting deity of birth; from "geno,"
Venuswhere Adonis lives in eternal bliss, is described "gignere," to bring forth. 10 Go. 11 Clay.
as containing the seminal principle of all things-in 12 Aspect, shape. 13 Stream. 14 Contain.
harmony with the Lucretian philosophy, as indicated in 1 Row, order. 16 Put on. 17 Form, nature.