In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.

180

185

Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,

Milton's Ode on the Nativity, 1. 116. Nuptial song, the song at 'the marriage supper of the Lamb.' Rev. xiv. 3; xix. 7, 9; xxi. 9.

177. This line, omitted in the edition of 1638, is inserted in Milton's handwriting in his own copy, which is preserved at Cambridge. Meek, peaceful. The epithet suggests the deeply significant words, 'kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.' Rev. i. 9.

180. Sing. Rev. v. 9 ; xv. 3 ; Par. Lost, III. 344 to 417.

181. Wipe the tears forever from his eyes. Isa. xxv. 8, "The Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces." Rev. vii. 17; xxi. 4.

183. Genius of the shore. The sainted Lycidas becomes a numen, or genius loci, like the dead Daphnis in Virgil (Eclogue, V. 64, 65). Very similar is a passage in the Italian pastoral poet Sannazaro, who represents a drowned man as thus addressed by his mourning friends:

66

Aspice nos, mitisque veni, tu numen aquarum
Semper eris, semper lætum piscantibus omen,"

look favoringly upon us and gently come; thou shalt be the guardian deity of the waters, omen ever gladdening to fishermen. The introduction of this conception of the genius loci marks 'a return to the pastoral form' of the poem. Is it a poetic variation of the idea in Hebrews i. 14?

184. In thy large recompense, the ample requital for all thy sufferings. Shalt be good. The passage referred to in Virgil in the preceding line has, "Sis bonus O felixque tuis," O mayst thou be good and propitious to thy

own.

185. Perilous. The critics will have it that this word is everywhere a dissyllable in Milton, except Par. Lost, II. 420. But is it necessary so to regard it? May not an anapest be allowed?

186. Thus sang, etc. "The shepherd elegiast," says Scott (Critical Essays), "who has not yet been formally introduced, is now set before us among his oaks and rills." It has been remarked that the last eight lines of the poem form a perfect stanza in ottava rima. Uncouth (A.-S. un, not,

While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,

190

cûdh, known, from cunnan, to know), unknown. So most of the critics interpret the word in this line, as being a natural expression of a young man looking forward to future fame. But perhaps it should have its modern sense, and be interpreted as a modest acknowledgment of rudeness or awkwardness. The swain, of course, is Milton, who now speaks in his own character.

187. While the still morn went out with sandals gray. 'Alluding,' say Stevens and Morris, 'to the gray appearance of the sky just before sunrise.' See Par. Regained, IV. 426, 427. May it mean the gray of the clouds and sky when morning is just vanishing later in the day? I am not aware that the exquisite beauty of this line has been commented upon. It is equal to the famous verses of Shakespeare, which Richard Grant White quotes to prove the superiority of Shakespeare's imagination over Milton's,

"But look, the morn in russet mantle clad

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill";

for this line of Milton's, more musical than these of Shakespeare, is also more condensed; and then it adds the charm of stillness.

188. Stops, vent-holes of a flute or pipe. So in Shakes 2 Henry IV., Induction, 17; Hamlet, III. ii. 76, 376, 381. Quills (Lat. calamus, reed, or caulis, a stalk; Ger. kiel), originally reed-pipes, the tubes of wind instruments. Spenser speaks of the 'homely shepherd's quill.' Johnson thought it the plectrum, and quoted Dryden's Virgil, Æneid, VI. 646, "His quill strikes seven notes" : but this meaning does not so well suit this passage. The various quills are changes of mood and metre 'the varied strains of the elegy' or themes of the poem (at lines 76, 88, 113, 132, 165). "This almost amounts to a recognition on the part of the poet of the irregularity of style, the mixture of different and even opposing themes." Jerram.

189. Eager, earnest, intent, keen. Doric lay (the Awpis dodá of the Greek pastoral poet Moschus, who flourished in Syracuse about 270 B. C., and who composed a beautiful elegy on his fellow-poet Bion), pastoral song. Theocritus, too, was a native of the Dorian colony at Syracuse. Doric, pertaining to the Dorians, a people of ancient Greece. In music, the Doric was severe, austere, or grave; the Lydian was soft, sweet, or pathetic; the Phrygian, sprightly, animated; the Ionic, airy, fanciful.

190. Stretched out. Stretched them out into shadow? In the last line of Virgil's first Eclogue we find, "Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbræ," and larger shadows fall from the lofty mountains. Do these lines mean that the poet was engaged from dawn till sunset in composing this lay?

And now was dropped into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

191. At the end of Spenser's Pastoral Eglogue upon the Death of Sir Philip Sidney, we have the line, —

"The sun,

lo! hastened hath his face to steep In western waves,"

as a reason for ceasing to sing.

192. He. The 'swain.' Twitched, caught up or snatched. Keightley says, 'drew tightly about him on account of the chilliness of the evening.' This picturesque ending expresses haste, as if conscious that in his absorption in 'eager thought' he had tarried too long. Mantle blue. R. C. Browne in his notes hints that the mantle was, like that of Hudibras, 'Presbyterian true blue !'

193. In Fletcher's Purple Island (1633) occurs the line,

"To-morrow shall ye feast in pastures new.'

Says Masson, "This is a parting intimation that the imaginary shepherd is Milton himself, and that the poem is a tribute to his dead friend rendered passingly in the midst of other occupations." "It is better," says Jerram, "to refer these words to the projected Italian tour, with which his mind must now have been occupied, than to any political intentions at this time."

For an interesting critical examination and exposition of lines 108-129, see Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, pp. 26-34. (Wiley and Son, N. Y., 1866.)