Such were the colonists of Merry Mount as they stood in the broad
smile of sunset round their venerated Maypole. Had a wanderer
bewildered in the melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a
half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus,
some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast,
and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the
change; but a band of Puritans who watched the scene, invisible
themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with
whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.

Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had
ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple-and-golden cloud.
One was a youth in glistening apparel with a scarf of the rainbow
pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded
staff--the ensign of high dignity among the revellers--and his left
grasped the slender fingers of a fair maiden not less gayly decorated
than himself. Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy
curls of each, and were scattered round their feet or had sprung up
spontaneously there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the
Maypole that its boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an
English priest, canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in
heathen fashion, and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By
the riot of his rolling eye and the pagan decorations of his holy
garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, and the very Comus of the
crew.

"Votaries of the Maypole," cried the flower-decked priest, "merrily
all day long have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be this your
merriest hour, my hearts! Lo! here stand the Lord and Lady of the May,