Emily Dickinson Lexicon

IM-BATHE', v.t. [in and bathe.]

To bathe all over. And gave her to her daughters to imbathe / In nectar'd lavers strowed with asphodel. Milton's Comus, v. 837. “The word imbathe occurs in our author's Reformation: – 'Methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him, that reads or hears; and the sweet odor of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrance of heaven.' (Prose-Works, vol. i. p. 2.) What was enthusiasm in most of the Puritanical writers, was poetry in Milton.” T. Warton's Minor Poems of Milton, p. 235. – E. B. H.