Minor Poems by Milton Part 19

879. By dead Parthenope's dear tomb. Parthenope was one of the Sirens. At Naples her tomb was shown.

880. And fair Ligea's golden comb. Ligea was probably also a siren. In Virgil, Georgics IV 336, we find a nymph of this name, spinning wool with other nymphs, "their bright locks floating over their snowy necks." The name Ligea means shrill-voiced.

887. In the reading make in an adverb.

892. My sliding chariot stays. Compare this use of _stay_ with that found in lines 134, 577, 820.

893. the azurn sheen. With _azurn_ compare _cedarn_, line 990.

908-909. Be careful what inflection you give these lines in the reading.

913. of precious cure: of precious power to cure.

921. To wait in Amphitrite's bower. _Amphitrite_ was a daughter of Ocea.n.u.s and Tethys. She was G.o.ddess of the sea, had the care of its creatures, and could stir up the waves in storm.

923. Sprung of old Anchises' line. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Brutus the Trojan was the grandson of aeneas and founder of London.

Anchises, in the Homeric story, is the father of aeneas. This fable plays an important part in the ancient British myth.

924. thy brimmed waves. A river is happiest when full to its brim.

930. Of what parts of speech are torrent and flood?

933. It is very curious that our word beryl and the German _Brille_ come directly from the same source.

937. And yet this river is the English Severn!

957. Note the impressive effect of the five-foot line ending the scene.

The shepherds have their dance in rustic fashion. The words describing this dance are the familiar peasant words, jig, duck, nod. The playful tone in which the spirit calls upon the swains to give place to their betters is charming.

964. With the mincing Dryades. "The _Dryades_ were nymphs of woods and trees, dwelling in groves, ravines, and wooded valleys, and were fond of making merry with Apollo, Mercury, and Pan."

980. I suck the liquid air: I inhale the upper air,--the _aether_ _liquidus_ of the poets. So Ariel, Tempest V 1 102, "I drink the air before me."

981. the gardens fair Of Hesperus and his daughters three. The number of the Hesperides and their parentage are differently given in various legends. The story of their garden in some mysterious place in the far west, where they guarded the tree that bore the golden apples, a.s.sisted by the dragon Ladon, is one of the best known in the cla.s.sic mythology.

984. Along the crisped shades and bowers. Milton applies _crisped_ to brooks, Par. Lost IV 237. Herrick has,--"the crisped yew," and the American Th.o.r.eau,--"A million crisped waves."

985. spruce. A very interesting account of the origin of this word is given by Skeat in his Etymological Dictionary.

986. The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours. See note on L'Allegro 15.

"The _Graces_ were guardians of the vernal sweetness and beauty of nature, friends and protectors of everything graceful and beautiful." The _Hours_ were G.o.ddesses of the seasons, daughters of Zeus and Themis. They were the door-keepers of Olympus, whose cloud-gate they open and shut: thus they preside over the weather.

990. About the cedarn alleys: about the pathways through cedar groves.

Coleridge, in Kubla Khan, has the line, "Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover"; and Tennyson, Geraint and Enid, the line,--"And moving toward a cedarn cabinet." So also William Barnes, in his Rural Poems, uses the expression, "stonen jugs."

992. Iris is the messenger of the G.o.ds: her path is the rainbow.

993. Dr. Murray gives other instances of blow as a transitive verb.

999. Adonis was a young shepherd, the special favorite of Venus. His death was caused by a wild boar. The story is told in various forms.

Observe that Milton makes him wax well of his deep wound.

1002. the a.s.syrian queen. The worship of Aphrodite (Venus) was brought into Greece from a.s.syria.

1005. Holds his dear Psyche. Psyche--the personification of the human soul--was a mortal maiden, beloved of Cupid. Venus, in her jealousy of Psyche, compelled her to pa.s.s through a long series of hardships and toils. Cupid at last succeeded in reconciling his mother and his beloved, and in having _Psyche_ advanced to the dignity of an immortal.

1015. Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend: where the curvature of the vault of the sky seems less than higher up toward the zenith.

1021. the sphery chime. See notes, Hymn on the Nativity 48 and 125.

LYCIDAS.

Lycidas is Milton's contribution to a volume of elegiac verses, in Greek, Latin, and English, composed by many college friends of Edward King, who was drowned in the wreck of the vessel in which he was crossing the Irish Channel.

In its main intention, Lycidas is an elegy, because it professes to mourn one who is dead and extols his virtues. In its form it is almost wholly pastoral, because it feigns an environment of shepherds, allegorizing college life as the life of men tending flocks, and the occupations of earnest students as the careless diversions of rustic swains.

Four times the pastoral note is rudely interrupted by the intervention of majestic beings who speak in awful tones from another world, and whose voices instantly check all familiar rustic speech, compelling it to wait till they have announced their messages from above. The supernal powers who thus descend to take their parts in the office of mourning are Phoebus, Apollo, Hippotades, G.o.d of the winds, Camus, G.o.d of the river Cam, and St. Peter. This mingling of cla.s.sic, Hebrew, and Christian conceptions is a marked characteristic of all Milton's poetry.

Thus Lycidas is neither wholly elegiac nor wholly pastoral. From the lips of St. Peter, typifying the church, comes a speech of violent denunciation, in the true later Miltonic manner. In strange contrast to this grim invective is the famous flower-pa.s.sage, the sweetest and loveliest thing of its kind in our literature.

1-5. To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather laurels,--is to make a new venture as a poet,--to compose a poem. The berries are harsh and crude,--he shatters their leaves before the mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man, or because he feels in himself a lack of "inward ripeness" to treat his theme worthily,--perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own choosing.

6-7. A sad duty is imposed upon him, forbidding further delay on any personal grounds.

8. Lycidas is one of the stock names of pastoral poetry. The poem, though most serious in its main motive and intention, is to have a pastoral coloring throughout. Note the impressive repet.i.tions, dead, dead, and the recurrences of the name Lycidas in the next two lines.

11. he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. Edward King had, in accordance with the college custom of his time, written verses, apparently all in Latin. Of these verses Ma.s.son, in his life of Milton, gives specimens. They seem to be commonplace.

13. and welter to the parching wind. See Par. Lost II 594, I 78.

15. Sisters of the sacred well. Ancient tradition connects the origin of the Muses with Pieria, a district of Macedonia at the foot of Olympus.

But the springs with which we a.s.sociate the Muses are Aganippe and Hippocrene on Mount Helicon.

19. So may some gentle muse. A peculiar use of the word _muse_ as masculine, and meaning _poet_.

23-31. We pursued the same studies, at the same college, and we studied from early morning sometimes till after midnight. The metaphors are all pastoral.

32-36. We wrote merry verse, bringing in the college jollities, in wanton student-fashion, and the good-natured old don who was our tutor affected to be pleased with our work.

34. Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel. The _Satyrs_, represented as having human forms, with small goat's horns and a small tail, had for their occupation to play on the flute for their master, Bacchus, or to pour his wine. The _Fauns_ were sylvan deities, attendants of Pan, and are represented, like their master, with the ears, horns, and legs of a goat.

37-49. Nature herself sympathizes with men, and mourns thy loss.