01 May 2006

Song To Comus


Come, let us our rights begin;
Why are you vexed, Lady? why do you frown?
Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from these gates
Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures
That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts,
When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns
Brisk as the April buds in primrose season.
And first behold this cordial julep here,
That flames and dances in his crystal bounds,
With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed.
Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena
Is of such power to stir up joy as this,
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.
Why should you be so cruel to yourself,
And to those dainty limbs, which Nature lent
For gentle usage and soft delicacy?
But you invert the covenants of her trust,
And harshly deal, like an ill borrower,
With that which you received on other terms,
Scorning the unexempt condition
By which all mortal frailty must subsist,
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,
That have been tired all day without repast,
And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin,
This will restore all soon....

From John Milton: Comus. Bridgewater Text

Well, I guess we've all tried that one once in a while. The last time was with a girl called S***** S******* (the initials gave her away) who subsequently sung bitter songs in a short-lived indie band.

Comus - Figure In Your Dreams

From the bad old days of Comus when no one bought their peerlessly evil first record and they went softly insane with anti-dread and came up with their mostly awful second album To Keep From Crying. This song has a certain deranged beauty nevertheless.

Comus - In The Lost Queen's Eyes

From the Dawn Maxi single and an altogether more enticing prospect. This isn't as evil or rampantly crazed as some of the stuff on First Utterance sounding instead like an alternative Wicker Man soundtrack with maybe even a slight sideswipe towards Wolf City era Amon Duul.

(to Kek... your comment is gone now I think but i had to delete and derange this post because for some reason a loose html weed was destabilising the whole blog. More than usual)

And for the record the first Comus album is better than anything by Amon Duul even if I have been enjoying Wolf City a lot recently since I got an i-poddable copy.

4 comments:

I am not Kek-w said...

I love Comus, fer sure, but my love of Duul is one of those indefensible, highly personal, irrational/illogical things that is deeply rooted in the very core of my being (phew!)...

I love 'Wolf City' soooo much that sometimes I can barely bring myself to play it. (I love most of their stuff, even their crappy late-period material, but 'Wolf City' is a personal touchstone/favourite...Renate's vocals on side one: don't get me started...) It's just one of those things that's been w/ me since I was in my mid-teens: the favourite band that no one else likes that much...maybe I just need to get out more.

Loki said...

well, i can't mess with a core being... i'll have to let this one pass... those bands that no one else much likes are the most important of all... i mean when i look back at my teenage years it's not NWW or Coil or TG or even New Beat or Ministry or Whitehouse or Sonic Youth or Danielle Dax or Big Black or the Butthole Surfers or(that's enough, I think)... that i hold most fondly, it's probably Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians...

No, really.

There's no explanation.

It just is.

Loki said...

not that I'm equating Edie with Amon Duul...

I am not Kek-w said...

No, please do. Someone ought to...

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