_haggards_: the least
tameable
hawks.
Golden Treasury
With the tone of this Sonnet compare Hamlet's "Give me that man That is
not passion's slave," etc. Shakespeare's writings show the deepest
sensitiveness to passion:--hence the attraction he felt in the
contrasting effects of apathy.
Poem 33.
_grame_: sorrow. It was long before English Poetry returned to the
charming simplicity of this and a few other poems by Wyat.
Poem 34.
Pandion in the ancient fable was father to Philomela.
Poem 38.
_ramage_: confused noise.
Poem 39.
_censures_: judges.
Poem 40.
By its style this beautiful example of old simplicity and feeling may be
referred to the early years of Elizabeth. _Late forgot_: lately.
Poem 41.
_haggards_: the least tameable hawks.
Poem 44.
_cypres_ or cyprus,--used by the old writers for _crape_: whether from
the French _crespe_ or from the Island whence it was imported. Its
accidental similarity in spelling to _cypress_ has, here and in Milton's
Penseroso, probably confused readers.
Poems 46, 47.
"I never saw anything like this funeral dirge," says Charles Lamb,
"except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the
Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth,
earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve
itself into the element which it contemplates. "
Poem 51.
_crystal_: fairness.
Poem 53.
This "Spousal Verse" was written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and
Katherine Somerset. Although beautiful, it is inferior to the
"Epithalamion" on Spenser's own marriage,--omitted with great reluctance
as not in harmony with modern manners.
_feateously_: elegantly.
_shend_: put out.
_a noble peer_: Robert Devereux, second Lord Essex, then at the height
of his brief triumph after taking Cadiz: hence the allusion following to
the Pillars of Hercules, placed near Gades by ancient legend.
