Page 14 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV

glee 3⁄4 must, with magic’s cup, become his other to seduce her company. Breaking off his revelry beneath silver-light, hearing her magic song, he begins his annual journey towards that remote temple in Delphi to meet17 and wear the mask of his other 3⁄4 Apollo, the shepherd.18 Virtue can lure vice, but vice not virtue.
Beneath midnight moonlight, in the hush of hours, near his ‘rough shades,’ not far-off from Plato’s shadowy lair 3⁄4 in this transition, in this interlude of being, at one moment Comus as incontinent, at another as innocent shepherd; at one moment he in Dionysian revelry, at another, in silence 3⁄4 Lady Chastity, Philosopher Queen, in virtue’s court prays to her guardian spirit first, and then to her Echo sweetly sings. Just as prayer mediates between faith and heaven, leafy abyss and winged peak, so did the Muse’s breath once mediated between earth and heaven. Whereas Lady Virtue’s prayer is logos-speech, her Echo song is mytho-poetry. Reason is the only medium to seek
17 In fact, Dionysus and Apollo, half-brothers by Zeus, were known to share the same Temple at Delphi in antiquity at different times: Dionysus in the winter and Apollo in the summer. March, Jenny. Cassell Dictionary of Classical Mythology. UK: Cassell, 1998.
18 Apollo is the God of healing, prophecy and divination, and patron of music and the arts, leader of the muses. In 5th century, he is seen as the Sun-God, sometimes identified too with Helios. March, Jenny. Cassell Dictionary of Classical Mythology. UK: Cassell, 1998.
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