Circe monologue — Circe : $b A dramatic fantasy

[_Laughing_] O children, children! How will ye all most learnedly discourse, Where ye know least? There lurks indeed small peril To your fair persons, but the danger hits Your unsophisticated silly souls. Some men there be, whose fervid, flattering words Would fluster and bedazzle you, till all This tranquil sweet companionship should vanish, As the light puffy thistle-down dispell’d, Leaving a weary lone unrest behind it. It is my swift preventing magic catches And tangles their approach. We are too quick For them; nor shall they soon outspeed us.—Yet My brother, the great magician, told me once, That if a drug e’er fail’d me and work’d not For any cause its proper due effects, Then we stood liable to some counter-spell Of similar assignment. And he cited My cousin Medea’s strange unhappy story. [_To PHILINNA, playfully_] So; When the poor Circe faints, Philinna, thou Wouldst fly off and desert her?