No More Learning

_Arethuse_ and _Mincius_: Sicilian and Italian waters here alluded to as
synonymous with the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil.

_oat_: pipe, used here like Collins' _oaten stop_, No. 146, for _Song_.

_Hippotades_: Aeolus, god of the Winds. _Panope_ a Nereid. The names of
local deities in the Hellenic mythology express generally some feature
in the natural landscape, which the Greeks studied and analysed with
their usual unequalled insight and feeling. Panope represents the
boundlessness of the ocean-horizon when seen from a height, as compared
with a limited horizon of the land in hilly countries such as Greece or
Asia Minor.

_Camus_: the Cam; put for King's University.

_The sanguine flower_: the Hyacinth of the ancients; probably our Iris.

_The pilot_: Saint Peter, figuratively introduced as the head of the
Church on earth, to foretell "the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in
their heighth" under Laud's primacy.

_the wolf_: Popery.

_Alpheus_: a stream in Southern Greece, supposed to flow underseas to
meet the Arethuse.

_Swart star_: the Dogstar, called swarthy because its heliacal rising in
ancient times occurred soon after mid-summer.

_moist vows_: either tearful prayers, or prayers for one at sea.

_Bellerus_: a giant, apparently created here by Milton to personify
Bellerium, the ancient title of the Land's End.
_The great Vision_:--The story was that the Archangel Michael had
appeared on the rock by Marazion in Mount's Bay which bears his name.
Milton calls on him to turn his eyes from the south homeward, and to
pity Lycidas, if his body has drifted into the troubled waters of the
Land's End. Finisterre being the land due south of Marazion, two places
in that district (then by our trade with Corunna probably less
unfamiliar to English ears), are named,--_Namancos_ now Mujio in
Galicia, _Bayona_ north of the Minho, or, perhaps a fortified rock (one
of the _Cies_ Islands) not unlike St. Michael's Mount, at the entrance
of Vigo Bay.

_ore_: rays of golden light. _Doric lay_: Sicilian, pastoral.


Poem 70.

_The assault_: was an attack on London expected in 1642, when the troops
of Charles I. reached Brentford. "Written on his door" was in the
original title of this sonnet. Milton was then living in Aldersgate
Street.

_Emathian Conqueror_: When Thebes was destroyed (B. C. 335) and the
citizens massacred by thousands, Alexander ordered the house of Pindar
to be spared. He was as incapable of appreciating the Poet as Lewis XIV.
of appreciating Racine: but even the narrow and barbarian mind of
Alexander could understand the advantage of a showy act of homage to
Poetry.