No More Learning

The remark quoted in the note to No. 47 applies equally to these truly
wonderful verses, which, like "Lycidas," may be regarded as a test of
any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of Poetry. The
general differences between them are vast: but in imaginative intensity
Marvell and Shelley are closely related. This poem is printed as a
translation in Marvell's works: but the original Latin is obviously his
own. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is rare,
answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6:

Alma Quies, teneo te! et te, germana Quietis, Simplicitas! vos ergo diu
per templa, per urbes Quaesivi, regum perque alta palatia, frustra: Sed
vos hortorum per opaca silentia, longe Celarunt plantae virides, et
concolor umbra.


Poems 112&113.

_L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_. It is a striking proof of Milton's
astonishing power, that these, the earliest pure Descriptive Lyrics in
our language, should still remain the best in a style which so many
great poets have since attempted. The Bright and the Thoughtful aspects
of Nature are their subjects: but each is preceded by a mythological
introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian manner. The meaning of the
first is that Gaiety is the child of Nature; of the second, that
Pensiveness is the daughter of Sorrow and Genius.

112: Perverse ingenuity has conjectured that for _Cerberus_ we should
read _Erebus_, who in the Mythology is brother at once and husband of
Night. But the issue of this union is not Sadness, but Day and
Aether:--completing the circle of primary creation, as the parents are
both children of Chaos, the first-begotten of all things. (Hesiod.
)

_the mountain nymph_: compare Wordsworth's Sonnet, No. 210.

_The clouds in thousand liveries dight_: is in _apposition_ to the
preceding, by a grammatical license not uncommon with Milton.

_tells his tale_: counts his flock; _Cynosure_: the Pole Star; _Corydon,
Thyrsis_, etc. : Shepherd names from the old Idylls; _Jonson's learned
sock_: the gaiety of our age would find little pleasure in his elaborate
comedies; _Lydian airs_: a light and festive style of ancient music.

113: _bestead_: avail.

_starr'd Ethiop queen_: Cassiopeia, the legendary Queen of Ethiopia, and
thence translated amongst the constellations.

_Cynthia_: the Moon: her chariot is drawn by dragons in ancient
representations.

_Hermes_: called Trismegistus, a mystical writer of the Neo-Platonist
school; _Thebes_, etc. : subjects of Athenian Tragedy; _Buskin'd_:
tragic; _Musaeus_: a poet in Mythology.

_him that left half told_: Chaucer, in his incomplete "Squire's Tale. "

_great bards_: Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, are here intended.

_frounced_: curled; _The Attic Boy_: Cephalus.


Poem 114.

Emigrants supposed to be driven towards America by the government of
Charles I.

_But apples_, etc.