_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 the perception of the plagiarism rather increases than diminishes the pleasure with which we read either deathless work. Republican although he were, the great poet sits a throned king upon Parnassus, privileged to cull flowers where he listeth in right of his immortal laurel- crown. Phoebe loved flowers; and from the earliest tuft of violets ensconced under the sunny southern hedge, to the last lingering sprig of woodbine shaded by some time-hallowed oak, the blossoms of the meadow and the coppice were laid under contribution for her posies.