Sabrina Fair

Song

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph
that liv'st unseenWithin thy airy shell

By slow Meander's margent green,

And in the violet-imbroider'd vale

Where the love-lorn nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:

Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair

That likest thy Narcissus are?

O if thou have

Hid them in some flow'ry cave,

Tell me but whereSweet Queen of Parley,

Daughter of the Sphere,

So mayst thou be translated to the skies,

And give resounding grace to all heav'ns harmonies.

Sabrina fair

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;

Listen for dear honour's sake,

Goddess of the silver lake,

Listen and save.

Listen and appear to us

In name of great Oceanus,

By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,

And Tethys' grave majestic pace;

By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look,

And the Carpathian wizard's hook;

By scaly Triton's winding shell,

And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell;

By Leucothea's lovely hands,

And her son that rules the strands;

By Thetis' tinsel-slipper'd feet,

And the songs of Sirens sweet;

By dead Parthenope's dear tomb,

And fair Ligea's golden comb,

Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks

Sleeking her soft alluring locks;

By all the nymphs that nightly dance

Upon thy streams with wily glance,

Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head

From thy coral-pav'n bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,

Till thou our summons answer'd have.

Listen and save.

Sabrina rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings

By the rushy-fringed bank,

Where grows the willow and the osier dank,

My sliding chariot stays,

Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen

Of turkis blue, and em'rald green

That in the channel strays,

Whilst from off the waters fleet

Thus I set my printless feet

O'er the cowslip's velvet head,

That bends not as I tread;

Gentle swain at thy request

I am here.

-John Milton