NOTES The numeration, in thicker type, refers to the poems and not to pages. 6 2. springs... that lies. The northern Early English 3rd person plur. in -s is extremely common in the Folio Shakespeare. In some cases the subject-noun may be considered as singular in thought.'—Abbott. Shakesp. Gram. 34. silent moves the feet. See note on 2. Blake was probably influenced by Shakespeare's use. Three stanzas omitted at end. 38. From a long ode 'To the immortal memory and friendship of that noble pair, Sir Lucius Cary [Lord Falkland, who fell at the Battle of Newbury, 1643] and Sir Henry Morison.' 39. An extract from Auguries of Innocence. 40. Stanza III. the turning sphere. 'Sphere' in the older poets implies the ancient Ptolemaic system of astronomy, in which ten spheres circle round the earth, carrying the Sun, the Moon, the seven planets, and the fixed stars. The sphere was a spinning shell of undefined substance carrying the planet: they made music by their motion. See stanza XIII., and note on 96.—vi. Lucifer, the morning star.—vIII. Pan, the god of Nature, here for the Lord of all.-x. Cynthia, the moon. Her hollow round, see note on stanza III.-xxi. Lars and Lemures [pronounce Lemmurs, Englished from Larēs and Lemurēs], the household gods and spirits of the dead.Flamens, Roman priests.—xx11. twice-batter'd god, Dagon. Ashtaroth (Astarte), Phœnician goddess, later identified with Venus.-Hammon, Ammon, an Ethiopian god worshipped widely in N. Africa under the form of a ram.—Thammuz, Tammus, an obscure Asiatic deity identified with Adonis, whose myth represented the death of the year in winter.XXIV. Osiris, Egyptian god of Agriculture, probably confused here with the sacred Bull, Apis.-xxv. Typhon, a primitive Greek monster-god, father of the Winds.- -xxvI. Fays,fairies. 41. A selection from sixty similar stanzas in Christmas Antiphons. 44. Attempts by Swinburne, Rossetti, Yeats, and other editors to harmonise the fragmentary phrases of this magnificent poem have failed. Its force is not impaired by the irregularities of verbal structure. I give John Sampson's conservative text. 48. Part II. stanza 4. 'Twas right, said they. The marginal gloss appended by Coleridge to later editions explains that the Mariner's shipmates here make themselves accomplices in his crime: And, in Part III. stanza 11, I've won means that 'Life-in-Death winneth the Mariner from Death.'-Part VII. stanza 3. Itrow. This pronunciation rhyming with now is an example of an obsolete word wrongly spoken. Trow rhymes with owe, etc. thus, 'Have more than thou showest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest.'-King Lear, i. 4. 52. This section of a poem, which Shelley subsequently altered and divided up, stands (as given here) metrically apart from the rest. 56. Martinmas. The feast of St. Martin, the Apostle of Gaul,' commemorated as a lesser Saint in the English Church on Nov. 11th, which is now Armistice Day. St. Martin was a soldier, son of a military tribune in the army of the emperor Constantine in the fourth century. From early youth he was a convert to Christianity and became Bishop of Tours, where his memory is perpetuated. He is usually represented in the act of dividing his cloak with his sword in order to bestow half of it on a naked beggar. 60. The last ten lines are from a longer poem by Lieut. Hinches. Burns made his song of them. Hinches' spellings, love and well, do not forbid dialectal pronunciation. 63. Attributed to Capt. Ogilvie, and appears in Scott's Rokeby quoted in the notes. The text here is Burns's version of it. 68. Part of a Jacobite song adapted by Burns. 69. fool, an unfortunate rhyme because its initial suggests fowl. The last couplet has become proverbial, with and in place of or, as if it meant the rest is all rubbish.' Pope meant that the rest was only clothes, in the cobbler his leather apron, in the parson his stuff gown. The juxtaposition of all with but, when but means nothing but, is only excused by the regular accent of the verse, which forbids the usual meaning of the common phrase all bùt. 70. In 4th stanza guid faith is an exclamation. 72. Founded on a traditional Cornish song. 73. Observe the unmatched accumulative value of the refrain: also that the lingo is the narrator's, not the captain's. 75. Byron sent this to John Murray, the publisher, as a jocular draft of his reply to Dr. Polidori on reading that author's play. That the personages who figure in this society are not all known to us does not weaken the humour of the picture. On p. 92 the two ejaculation-marks in third and fourth lines from foot are added by present editor. 76. Many of Pope's lines have passed into common speech: this extract contains examples. 85. Translated from the Greek of Moschus. 89. Ixion's wheel. Ixion was king of the Lapithæ, who fought with the Centaurs. As punishment for his crimes and ingratitude to Zeus he was chained to a fiery wheel which revolved for ever in the lower world.-Memphian Sphinx. Sphinx was a monstrous being in Greek mythology, with a woman's head on the body of a winged lion. In Egypt, whence it was derived, it was a couchant (unwinged) lion, human in form from the breast upwards; and rows of these mysterious figures lined the avenues of the temples. Memphis was one of the earliest historical cities in Egypt and had magnificent temples. The famous colossal Sphinx is by the Pyramids at Gizeh, which is some miles down the Nile from Memphis. 96. Lorenzo is talking with Jessica (Merch. of Ven. Act v.); an example of the lyrical beauty which Shakespeare introduces into his blank verse.-Like an angel sings, see note on 40, stanza III. Plato says, 'On the upper surface of each sphere is a Siren, who goes round with them, hymning a single sound and note.' 105. Lay of the Last Minstrel. Opening of last canto. 106. The comparison is between Tuscany and Yorkshire: Lavernia (La Verna, Alvernia), where St. Francis received the stigmata, in the Apennines above Florence, 'Nel crudo sasso intra Tevere ed Arno,' Dante, Par. x1. t. 36.—Scargill is part of the scene of Scott's Rokeby. 108. The opening of Endymion, published 1818. R 110. The Spirit of the Sphere, omitting the invocations. 121. From a sonnet in the Arcadia, omitting 5 lines. 122. The famous last stanza of Lovelace's lyric, When Love with unconfined wings. The other three are unworthy of it. 129. Sérene lights. This 'recession of accent,' where two strong speech-accents collide, was an old habit of speech, now lost. It is frequent in Shakespeare; Milton renounced it in his later work; Shelley rather affected it, and his practice decides the accent here. 130. 1. 15. Sisters, the Muses who frequented the fount on Mt. Parnassus.-23. hill, in pastoral imagery, the University of Cambridge.-36. Damætas, a shepherd, here for some Cambridge poet.-54. Mona high, Anglesey, then wooded; it has, however, no 'heights.' Holyhead is perhaps intended. -55. Deva, the Dee, a river with magical legends. These places are near the scene of the wreck.-58. Orpheus, in the Greek legend torn to pieces by Thracian women.—75. blind Fury, Atropos, one of the three Fates. -77. Ears. The ear regarded as the seat of memory (Conington).—85. Arethuse, a stream in Sicily, the land of Theocritus; Mincius, by Virgil's birthplace: those being the two pastoral poets in whose manner this poem is written.-96. Hippotades, Æolus, the god of the winds.-99. Panopë, one of the fifty Nereids, perhaps here representing by her name the calm sea and wide horizon (Palgrave).-103. Camus, the river-god of Cambridge.-106. inscribed with woe, a Greek fancy that the petals were marked with AI. Apollo had accidentally killed the youth Hyacinthos with a quoit, and the plant sprang up from his blood.-109. Pilot, of the church, St. Peter. Milton here condemns the corrupt clergy.-132. Alpheus, the river-lover of Arethusa. In the strange legend their waters mixed, and are here identified: the return is to the subject of the monody. -160. Bellerus, Milton's invention of a 'name-father' for Land's End, which was called Bellerium.—161. Vision. Original text has no capital initial; but the vision is the Archangel Michael, who appeared on St. Michael's Mount.-162. Namancos and Bayona, places in Spain due south of Land's End. 135. Coleridge's Christabel is an unfinished poem. 137. Childe Harold, iv. stanzas 140-1. 140. demesne. The Anglo-French spelling of the lawbooks; the prevailing pronunciation of the final syllable is as in the rhyme here; but is in good legal and general use pronounced as in its variant form domain; and this is historically preferable (0. E.D.). Note also the homophone demean in common use. 143. Proteus, the prophetic' old man of the Sea,' a personage rich in delightful legends.—Triton, a son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, who lived in a garden under the sea: usually represented with a dolphin's tail. Tritons are often imagined as numerous as Mermaids. 145. An unfinished poem of which the first two stanzas are given. 147. Tempe, a beautiful mountain gorge in Thessaly connected with the worship of Apollo. 148. Last stanza of three. 151. On occasion, when the length of this poem is inconvenient, the bracketed stanzas can be omitted. 154. Last stanza omitted. In st. 1, winds, birds, and floods are all genitives, and birds is plural. Accidence ambiguous. 155. Note Day is fem. in stanza 2, masc. in 3. 156. Hippocrene. A fountain on Mt. Helicon sacred to the Muses, fabled to have sprung up from a stroke of Pegasus' hoof,"Iπжоν крývŋ. The English word is always a trisyllable. 159. fast is used for 'swiftly' in stanza 4, and five lines above for 'firm.' In first stanza tir'd is a disyllable=tierd. 171. Fourteen lines of fanciful mythology are omitted as indicated in numeration. 1. 10. Morpheus, the god of dreams. -59. Cynthia, the moon.-88. Hermes, a mythical king of Egypt named Thot, to whom the Neo-Platonists ascribed the name and universal wisdom of the Greek god Hermes. He is thrice-great as King, Priest, and Philosopher (Browne).— 89. The spirits of the dead are imagined as inhabiting the starry'spheres': see note on 40.–104. Musœus, i.e. to recall the lost poems of Musæus, and the song by which Orpheus rescued Eurydice from Hell, and the tale that Chaucer left unfinished.—134. Sylvan, the forest-god. 172. Maian. The Greek Maia was mother of Hermes. The Latin goddess of that name became associated with the month of May, when also Hermes' (Mercury's) feast was kept. Hence perhaps the rare epithet 'Maian' here may mean 'scented like spring flowers.' Compare the incense of all flowers' just above. |