204. ~single darkness~, darkness only. _Single_ is from the same base as
_simple_; comp. l. 369.
205. ~What might this be?~ This is a direct question about a past event,
and has the same meaning as "what should it be?" in line 482: see note
there. ~A thousand fantasies~, etc. On this, passage Lowell says: "That
wonderful passage in _Comus_ of the airy tongues, perhaps the most
imaginative in suggestion he ever wrote, was conjured out of a dry
sentence in Purchas's abstract of Marco Polo. Such examples help us to
understand the poet." Reference may also be made to the _Anat. of Mel._:
"Fear makes our imagination conceive what it list, ... and tyrannizeth
over our fantasy more than all other affections, especially in the
dark"; also to the song prefixed to the same work, "My phantasie
presents a thousand ugly shapes," etc. On the power of imagination or
phantasy, Shakespeare says:
"As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to _shapes_, and gives to _airy nothing_
A local habitation and a name."--
_M. N. D._ v. 1. 14.
Compare also Ben Jonson's _Vision of Delight_:
"Break, Phant'sie, from thy cave of cloud,
And spread thy purple wings;
Now all thy figures are allow'd,
And various shapes of things:
Create of _airy forms_ a stream ...
And though it be a waking dream," etc.
207. ~Of calling shapes~, etc. In Heywood's _Hierarchy of Angels_ there is
a reference to travellers seeing strange shapes beckoning to them. Such
words as 'shapes,' 'shadows,' 'airy tongues,' etc., illustrate Milton's
power to create an indefinite, yet expressive picture. Comp. _Aen._ iv.
460. ~beckoning shadows dire~. A characteristic arrangement of words in
Milton: comp. lines 470, 945.