And low, where dawning day doth never peep,
His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed
Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steep
In silver dew his ever-drooping head,

Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spread.

XL.

Whose double gates he findeth locked fast;
The one fair fram'd of burnish'd ivory,
The other all with silver overcast ;

And wakeful dogs before them far do lie,
Watching to banish Care their enemy,
Who oft is wont to trouble gentle Sleep.
By them the sprite doth pass in quietly,

And unto Morpheus comes, whom drowned deep
In drowsy fit he finds; of nothing he takes keep.

XLI.

And, more to lull him in his slumber soft,

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring wind, much like the sound
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swown.
No other noise, nor peoples troublous cries,
As still are wont t' annoy the walled town,
Might there be heard: but careless Quiet lies
Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemies.*

* The exquisite adaptation of the sound of this stanza to its sense has been much praised. Hunt observes, "A poetical reader need hardly be told that he should humor such verses with a corresponding tone in the recital."

XLII.

The messenger approaching to him spake ;
But his waste words return'd to him in vain :
So sound he slept, that nought might him awake.
Then rudely he him thrust, and push'd with pain,
Whereat he gan to stretch: but he again
Shook him so hard, that forced him to speak.
As one then in a dream, whose dryer brain

Is tost with troubled sights and fancies weak,

He mumbled soft, but would not all his silence break.

XLIII.

The sprite then gan more boldly him to wake,
And threatned unto him the dreaded name
Of Hecaté: whereat he gan to quake,

And, lifting up his lumpish head, with blame
Half angry asked him, for what he came.
"Hither," quoth he, "me Archimago sent,
He that the stubborn sprites can wisely tame,
He bids thee to him send for his intent

A fit false Dream, that can delude the sleepers sent.”

XLIV.

The god obey'd; and, calling forth straight way

A diverse dream out of his prison dark,

Delivered it to him, and down did lay

His heavy head, devoid of careful cark;
Whose senses all were straight benumbed and stark.
He, back returning by the ivory door,
Remounted up as light as cheerful lark,
And on his little wings the Dream he bore

In haste unto his lord, where he him left before.

XLV.

Who all this while, with charms and hidden arts,
Had made a lady of that other spright,

And fram'd of liquid air her tender parts,

So lively, and so like in all mens sight,

That weaker sense it could have ravished quite :
The makers seif, for all his wondrous wit,
Was nigh beguiled with so goodly sight.

Her all in white he clad, and over it

Cast a black stole, most like to seem to Una fit.

XLVI.

Now when that idle Dream was to him brought,
Unto that elfin knight he bad him fly,

Where he slept soundly void of evil thought,
And with false shews abuse his fantasy;

In sort as he him schooled privily.

And that new creature, born without her due,
Full of the makers guile, with usage sly

He taught to imitate that lady true,

Whose semblance she did carry under feigned hue.

The foregoing description of the House of Sleep, is one of those exquisite pictures whose richness is equalled only by its truth. Hunt says of it-"We are to suppose a precipitous country, striking gloomily and far downwards to a cavernous sea-shore, in which the bed of Morpheus is placed, the ends of its curtains dipping and fluctuating in the water which reaches it from underground. The door is towards a flat on the land side, with dogs lying far before it, and a lulling sound overhead of wind and rain-the sounds that men love to hear in the intervals

of their own sleep." Chaucer has used a similar figure in decribing the "dark valley" of sleep:

"A few wells

Came running from the cliffs adown,

That made a deadly sleeping soun."

The false dream, brought for the purpose of misleading the knight, is one in which the vile Duessa, disguised as Una, is made instrumental in deceiving him as to the character of his true lady.

The knight seems credulous, as honest people are apt to be; but we can scarce forgive him for being persuaded to doubt Una. His weakness costs him dear; for the new effort of Archimago, with which the following Canto opens, succeeds so far as to make the Red Cross Knight flee away, leaving "the royal virgin" unprotected in the toils of the arch-hypocrite. The passage describing the artifice being simply disagreeable, it has been omitted.

CANTO II.

The guileful great enchanter parts

The Red Cross Knight from Truth :
Into whose stead fair Falsehood steps,
And works him woeful ruth.

I.

By this the northern wagoner had set
His sevenfold team behind the steadfast star
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firm is fixt, and sendeth light from far
To all that in the wide deep wandring are;
And cheerful chanticlere with his note shrill C
Had warned once, that Phœbus fiery car,

In haste was climbing up the eastern hill,
Full envious that Night so long his room did fill

II.

When those accursed messengers of hell,

That feigning Dream, and that fair-forged spright,

Came to their wicked master, and

gan tell

Their bootless pains, and ill-succeeding night: