Minor Poems by Milton Part 13

125. kerchieft in a comely cloud. _Kerchief_ is here used in its original and proper sense. Look up its origin.

126. The winds may be called rocking because they visibly rock the trees, or because they shake houses.

127. Or ushered with a shower still. The shower falls gently, without wind.

130. With minute-drops from off the eaves. After the rain has ceased, and while the thatch is draining, the drops fall at regular intervals for a time,--as it were, a drop every minute. Il Penseroso listens with contentment to the wind, the rustling rain-fall on the leaves, and the monotonous patter of the drops when the rain is over.

131. The shower is past, and the sun appears, but Il Penseroso finds its beams flaring and distasteful. He seeks covert in the dense groves.

134. Sylvan is the G.o.d of the woods.

135. The monumental oak is so called from its great age and size.

140. Consciously nursing his melancholy, Il Penseroso deems the wood that hides him a sacred place, and resents intrusion as a profanation.

141. Hide me from day's garish eye. See Richard III. IV 4 89, Romeo and Juliet III 2 25.

142. While the bee with honeyed thigh. Is this good apiology?

146. Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep. Note that sleep is represented as having feathers. These feathers, in their soft, gentle movement and in their refres.h.i.+ng effect are likened to dew. The figure is a common one with the poets. In Par. Lost IX 1044, Milton has,--"till dewy sleep oppressed them." Cowper, Iliad II, 41, has,--"Awaking from thy dewy slumbers."

148. his refers to the _dewy-feathered sleep_. Il Penseroso asks that a strange, mysterious dream, hovering close by the wings of sleep, and lightly pictured in a succession of vivid forms, may be laid on his eye-lids.

155-166. The word studious in line 156 determines that the pa.s.sage refers to college life and not to church attendance. The old English colleges have their cloisters, and these have much the same architectural features as do churches.

157. embowed means vaulted, or bent like a _bow_.

158. ma.s.sy-proof: ma.s.sive and proof against all failure to support their load.

159. And storied windows richly dight. Compare L'Allegro, 62.

170. The best possible comment on this use of the verb spell is Milton's own language, Par. Regained IV 382, where Satan, addressing the Son of G.o.d, thus speaks:--

Now, contrary, if I read aught in Heaven, Or Heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars Voluminous, or single characters In their conjunction met, give me to spell, Sorrows and labors, opposition, hate, Attends thee; scorns, reproaches, injuries, Violence and stripes, and, lastly, cruel death.

Il Penseroso's aspiration is that as an astrologer he may learn the influence of every star and that he may come to know the virtue of every herb.

ARCADES.

The n.o.ble persons of the family of the Countess Dowager of Derby were fortunate enough to obtain the services of the poet John Milton to aid in the composition of a mask, which they presented to her ladys.h.i.+p at her residence in the country. Arcades--the Arcadians--is Milton's contribution to this performance. In date the poem precedes Comus, which is known to have been composed in 1634.

On the meaning of the term _mask_, as applied to a dramatic form, see introductory note on Comus.

20. Latona (or Leto) was the mother of Apollo and Diana by Zeus.

21. the towered Cybele is Virgil's Berecyntia Mater, the Phrygian mother, who, wearing her mural crown, drives in her chariot through the cities of Phrygia. She was conceived as one of the very oldest deities, and as mother of a hundred G.o.ds. See aeneid VI 785.

28. Of famous Arcady ye are. Arcadia, in the Peloponnesus, was peculiarly the home of music and song, especially among the shepherds. See Virgil, Eclogue VII 4-5.

30. Divine Alpheus. See note on Lycidas 132.

46. curl the grove: bestow upon the grove dense, crisp foliage.

47. With ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove. The grove is intersected with a maze of circling and purposeless paths.

49. noisome: full of annoyance, injurious. See Par. Lost XI 478. blasting vapors. See note on Comus 640.

51. thwarting thunder blue. Compare Julius Caesar I 3 50, "the cross blue lightning."

52. the cross dire-looking planet. Cross means _adverse, unfavorable_.

See note on _influence_, Hymn on the Nativity 71.

54. evening gray. See note on Lycidas 187.

60. murmurs. Compare Comus 526.

63. the celestial Sirens' harmony. The Sirens are here advanced to a high function and given a new Epithet. Compare Comus 253.

64. the nine infolded spheres. See note on Hymn on Nativity 48.

65-66. See note on Lycidas 75.

69. the daughters of Necessity: the Fates.

72-73. which none can hear Of human mould with gross unpurged ear.

Compare Merchant of Venice V 1 64.

87. touch the warbled string: the string that is accompanied with the voice. See Il Penseroso 106.

97. Ladon, a river of Arcadia, flowing into the Alpheus.

98. Lycaeus and Cyllene, mountains of Arcadia.

100. Erymanth. Erymanthus is a range of mountains separating Arcadia from Achaia and Elis.

102. Maenalus, another mountain of Arcadia.

106. Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were. Syrinx was an Arcadian nymph, who, being pursued by Pan, threw herself into the Ladon, where she was metamorphosed into a reed, of which the shepherds thereafter made their pipes.

AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.