Meanwhile the brothers have met a Guardian Spirit, also disguised as a shepherd, and he warns them of their sister’s danger.  Guided by him they set out to find her.  Reaching the palace, they rush in, sword in hand.  They dash the magic glass to the ground and break it in pieces and put Comus and his rabble to flight.  But though the Lady is thus saved she remains motionless and stony in her chair.

“What, have ye let the false enchanter scape?” the Guardian Spirit cries.  “Oh, ye mistook, ye should have snatched his wand and bound him fast.”  Without his rod reversed and backward-muttered incantation they cannot free the Lady.  Yet there is another means.  Sabrina, the nymph of the Severn, may save her.  So the Spirit calls upon her for aid.

    “Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,
Listen for dear honour’s sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,

                Listen and save.”

Sabrina comes, and sprinkling water on the Lady, breaks the charm.

“Brightest Lady, look on me;
Thus I sprinkle on thy breast
Drops that from my fountain pure
I have kept of precious cure,
Thrice upon thy fingers’ tip,
Thrice upon thy rubied lip;
Next this marble venomed seat,
Smeared with gums of glutinous heat,
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold: 
Now the spell hath lost its hold.”

The Lady is free and, greatly rejoicing, the Guardian Spirit leads her, with her brothers, safe to their father’s home.

All these poems of which I have told you, Milton wrote during the quiet years spent at Horton.  But at length these days came to an end.  He began to feel his life in the country cramped and narrow.  He longed to go out into the great wide world and see something of all the beauties and wonder of it.  Italy, which had called so many of our poets, called him.  Once more his kindly father let him do as he would.  He gave him money, provided him with a servant, and sent him forth on his travels.  For more than a year Milton wandered, chiefly among the sunny cities of Italy.  He meant to stray still further to Sicily and Greece, but news from home called him back, “The sad news of Civil War.”  “I thought it base,” he said, “that while my fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should be traveling abroad at ease.”

When Milton returned home he did not go back to Horton, but set up house in London.  Here he began to teach his two nephews, his sister’s children, who were boys of nine and ten.  Their father had died, their mother married again, and Milton not only taught the boys, but took them to live with him.  He found pleasure, it would seem, in teaching, for soon his little class grew, and he began to teach other boys, the sons of friends.