Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names.

These lines come from John Milton’s masque *Comus* (first performed in 1634 at Ludlow Castle for the Earl of Bridgewater’s family). In the poem, the Attendant Spirit describes the kinds of nocturnal terrors and supernatural illusions that can beset travelers—apparitions, ominous gestures, and disembodied voices—especially in lonely places and at night. The masque as a whole dramatizes the testing of virtue (particularly chastity and moral steadfastness) against enchantment and sensual temptation, with the Spirit framing the dangers as both literal “night-fears” and moral/spiritual deceptions.

Milton evokes a catalogue of eerie phenomena—phantom “shapes,” threatening “shadows,” and bodiless “tongues” that seem to speak people’s names—to capture how fear and temptation can externalize themselves as persuasive, personalized hauntings. The phrase “syllable men’s names” suggests an uncanny intimacy: the danger is not abstract but calls to the individual, as if the darkness knows and addresses you. In *Comus*, such imagery supports a larger moral argument: the most frightening enchantments are those that mimic reality and exploit human vulnerability, yet steadfast virtue can withstand even the most vivid illusions.