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196

"And when high noon hast gain'd, and when thou fall'st.
"Moon! that now meet'st the orient sun, now fly'st
"With the fix'd stars,—fix'd in their orb that flies;
"And ye five other wand'ring fires! that move
"In mystic dance, not without song, resound
"His praise who out of darkness call'd up light.1
"Air, and ye elements! the eldest birth
"Of nature's womb, that in quaternion run
"Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix

"And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.

66

"Ye mists and exhalations! that now rise
"From hill, or steaming lake, dusky, or gray,
"Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
"In honour to the world's great Author, rise;
"Whether to deck with clouds the uncolour'd sky,
"Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,

66

Rising, or falling, still advance his praise.

"His praise, ye winds! that from four quarters blow, "Breathe soft, or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines ! * "With every plant, in sign of worship, wave.

"Fountains! and ye that warble, as ye flow, "Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.

The construction is "Moon, that now fliest from, now meelesl the sun (t\ e. according as she approaches or recedes from him in her monthly course), together with the fixed stars, and ye five other fires, resound his praise." There should be a comma after "fly'st." Though these stars are fixed in their orb, yet this orb moves with the utmost rapidity. He speaks according to appearance, (see viii. 19, 21.) Bentley thinks that, as after Venus, the Sun, and the Moon, only four planets, i. e. Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn remained, we should read here four, not fire. But to defend the text we must suppose, either that he does not consider the morning star as the planet Venus, or that he includes the Earth to make up the five, as, viii. 129, he makes the earth a planet."Song;" in allusion to the Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres, by which no doubt he understood the proportion, regularity, and harmony of their motions. Shakspeare speaks of it more fully in his Merchant of Venice, act v. :—

"There's not the smallest orb that tboa behold'st,

But In his motion like an angel sings.

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim ;

Such harmony is in immortal souls:

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear."—(N.)

Newton further says, "wandering fires" is used in opposition to "fixed stars." Bat Dunster, I think more correctly, supposes the phrase to be in allusion to their Greek name, Tαvτxi, wanderer!.

'•" In quaternion run," i. e. that in a fourfold mixture and combination run a perpetual circle, one element continually changing into another in succession, and by this ceaseless fluctuation and transmutation continuing the nature of the world, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus borrowed from Orpheus. See Cicero, de Nat. Deor. ii. 33. -(N.)

Fairy Queen, VII. vil. 8 .—

"Most dainty trees, that shooting up anon,

Did seem to bow their bloss'mlng headt full lowe
For homage unto her."-(T.)

220

"Join voices, all ye living souls!' ye birds,
"That singing up to heaven-gate ascend,1
"Bear on your wings, and in your notes, his praise.
"Ye that in the waters glide, and ye that walk
"The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep;
"Witness if I be silent, morn or even,

3

"To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade,
"Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
66 Hail, Universal Lord! be bounteous still
"To give us only good: and, if the night
"Have gather'd aught of evil, or conceal'd,
"Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark!"
So pray'd they innocent, and to their thoughts
Firm peace recover'd soon, and wonted calm.

On to their morning's rural work they haste,
Among sweet dews and flowers, where any row
Of fruit-trees, over-woody, reach'd too far

Their pamper'd boughs,' and needed hands to check
Fruitless embraces or they led the vine

6

To wed her elm; she, spous'd, about him twines
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings
Her dower—the adopted clusters, to adorn
His barren leaves. Them, thus employ'd, beheld
With pity heaven's high King, and to him call'd

i "Souls" here is used, as it someiimes is in Scripture, for olher creatures besides man.—(N.)

* Shokspcare, 29th sonnet :—

"Like as the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth slags hymns at heaven's gale."—(N.)

* Dr. Bentley would read here, "if we (not /) be silent;" and in the next verse but one "our (not my ) song," as both Adam and Eve shared in this hymn. But Milton rather, Imitates the Greek chorus, where sometimes the plural, and sometimes the singular is used. The same is frequently practised by our poet in the speeches of the chorus in Samson Agonisles. This hymn, which naturally divides itself into interlocutory parts, was set to music some years ago, and the several parts of it were assigned distinctively to Adam and to Eve.—(P.)

He had his thoughts, as Dr. Bentley remarks, on that celebrated prayer in the Second Alcibiades of Plato :

Ζευ βασιλευ τα μεν εσθλα και ευχομενοις και ανευκτοις
Αμμι δίδου, τα δε λυγρα και ευχομένων απέρυκε.

"O Jove, our king, give us good things, both when we pray and do not pray for them; and remove from us evil things, even though we pray for them." And we learn from the llrsl book of Xenophon's memoirs of his master Socrates, that Socrates was wont to pray to the gods for good things only, as they knew best what Ihingi were to. And to the same purpose there is an excellent collect in our Liturgy for the eighth after Trinity. -N.' The celebrated 10th Satire of Juvenal inculcates this all through.

"Pampered" here is used with great propriety. Pampre, French, pampinus, Latin, means a vine-branch full of leaves. And a vineyard is said by the French pamprer when overgrown with superfluous leaves and unprofitable branches.—(Junius.)

Hor. Epod. ii. 9 :—

"Ant adulta vitlnm sropagine

Altai maritat populos."

Raphael, the sociable spirit,1 that deign'd

To travel with Tobias, and secur'd

His marriage with the sev'n-times-wedded maid.

66 Raphael,"
"said he, "thou hear'st what stir on earth
"Satan, from hell 'scaped through the darksome gulf,
"Hath rais'd in Paradise; and how disturb'd

2

"This night the human pair; how he designs
"In them at once to ruin all mankind.

"Go therefore, half this day as friend with friend
"Converse with Adam, in what bower or shade
"Thou find'st him, from the heat of noon retir'd
"To respite his day-labour with repast,
"Or with repose; and such discourse bring on,
"As may advise him of his happy state—
"Happiness in his power left free to will,*
"Left to his own free will—his will, though free,
"Yet mutable: whence warn him to beware
"He swerve not, too secure. Tell him withal
"His danger, and from whom; what enemy,
"Late fall'n himself from heaven, is plotting now
"The fall of others from like state of bliss:
"Ry violence? no, for that shall be withstood;
"Rut by deceit and lies: this let him know,
"Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend

66

Surprisal, unadmonish'd, unforewarn'd."
So spake the Eternal Father, and fulfill'd
All justice: nor delay'd the winged saint
After his charge receiv'd; but from among
Thousand celestial ardours,* where he stood

Veil'd with his gorgeous wings, up-springing light
Flew through the midst of heaven: the angelic quires,
On each hand parting, to his speed gave way

253 Through all the empyreal road: till, at the gate

Ovid. Met. *iv, 661, more fully, and more in accordance with Milton :

"Ulmas erat contra, spatiosa tumentibus avis,
Quam socia postquam pariter cum vile probavit;
At si staret, ait, cœlebs sine paimite truncus,
Nil prater Frondes, quare petcretur, haberet ;
Hæc quoque quæ juncta vftis requiescit in uimo

Si non nupta foret, terræ acclinata jaceret."—(N.)

* See lv. 170. "Sociable" and "Raphael" are dissyllables here. See note on 285. Milton in the following scene seems to have had his eye in a particular manner on the 9th canto of Tasso's Jerusalem, Iviii. 60. 1, 2.—(St. and Th.)

3 This is a pure Latinism, the substantive pronoun being supplied out of Ihe preceding adjective, and regulating the government of the following words—happiness in the power of him left free, etc.; so "left" is the genitive agreeing with him, taken out of "his."—(r.)

"Ardours," from the Latin ardor, which signifles a "fiery nature, fervent love," an appropriate epithet of an angel. Tbyer thinks it must be limited to the class of seraphim: xeragh in Hebrew signifying to burn.

Of heaven arriv'd, the gate self-open'd wide'
On golden hinges turning, as, by work
Divine, the Sov'ran Architect had fram'd.
From hence (no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight,
Star interpos'd,) however small, he sees
Not unconform to other shining globes

Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crown'd
Above all hills. As when by night the glass

Of Galileo, less assur'd, observes
Imagin'd lands and regions in the moon :
Or pilot, from amidst the Cyclades,

Delos, or Samos, first appearing, kens

4

3

A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight
He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
Sails between worlds and worlds; with steady wing
Now on the polar winds; then, with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air; till, within soar
Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems
A phoenix, gaz'd by all, as that sole bird,
When, to enshrine his relics in the sun's
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise 5
He lights, and to his proper shape returns,
A Seraph wing'd: six wings he wore to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad

6

279 Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast

1 Thus heaven's gales in Homer, II. v. 749, opened spontaneously:

See vii. 206.

Αυτομαται δε πυλαι μυκον ουρανου, ας έχον ωραι

2 "No cloud or star being interposed (ablat. absol.) he sees the earth, however small at that great distance it appears, not unlike other shining globes, and in it Paradise, which was crowned with cedars rising higher than the highest hills."—(N.)

3 Raphael surveying the earth from heaven's gates, is compared to an astronomer looking through Galileo's telescope at the distant objects in the moon, but with less accurate vision than Raphael's; or to a pilot in the Archipelago looking out for the Cyclades, a cluster or islands in that sea, and observing the largest of them, Delos or Samos, appearing first like specks far away in the horizon.—" Glass observes," by a poetic ligura common in the ancient classics, for "a person through the glass observes."—(N.)

* Milton means, that when at the highest pitch of an eagle's flight, Raphael teemed to the birds like a phoenix. The phoenix was a bird of uncommon largeness and beauty, according to the accounts of mythology, and the only one of its species: after living five or six hundred years, it built for itself a funeral pile of aromatic wood and gums, which were kindled by the rays of the sun. From the ashes there arose a full-grown young phoenix, which bore the relics of the sire to Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, and there deposited them in the temple of the sun, the other birds attending and gazing on him in his flight. See Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 2: Ovid, Met. xv.; and Claudian, de Phonicc. Tasso, Gier. Liber, xvii. 35, compares Armida to a phoenix.—(N.)

There the gate was. A good angel (like the Good Shepherd! could enter at the gate; not like Satan, who, as a thief climbing over the roof, flew over it. See iv. 181.—(N.) • /. e. Gathered up bis wings, and looked in his proper character, an angel; having no longer the appearance of a phoenix.

7 See Isaiah vi. 2.—(N.)

With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold,
And colours dipt in heaven; the third his feet
Shadow'd from either heel with feather'd mail,'
285 Sky-tinctur'd grain. Like Maia's son he stood,2

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1 Alluding to feathers on a bird lying short of one another, like plaits on a coat of mail." Sky-tinctured" expresses beauty and durableness; "grain," any dyed substance.-(R.)

2 Homer, Il. xxiv. 333, etc. and Virgil, Æn. iv. 238, etc. have given elaborate descriptions of the flight of "Maia's son," Mercury, from heaven to earth, on a mission from the Almighty of benevolence to man, to guide and to warn him. Milton, who has exerted the whole force of his imagination, and lavished all the embellishments of imagery and diction, on his description of the flights of Raphael and Satan, has adopted, and as usual improved, every hint in the descriptions of his great architypes which was suited to his purpose. As these descriptions are referred to in my notes on other passages of the poem, and as the reader may wish to form his own judgment, I quote at length:

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Jupiter looking down from heaven, beholding with pity old Priam, the father of his people, soon about to be exposed to danger from the direst enemy of his race, summons Mercury, his messenger, who on other occasions performed friendly offices to man, and despatches him to earth to hold social intercourse with the king, to advise and guide him. The winged messenger promptly obeys; and binding on his feet his wings, down speeds his flight. Compare with this 220, 221, 229, 230, 247, 248. It is unnecessary to point out the immeasurable superiority of Milton in his description of the progress of Raphael's flight-the spontaneous opening of heaven's gates-the first view of earth, looking like a distant speck of land in the ocean-his sailing between worlds and worlds-his resemblance on his approach to earth, while high in the air, to a phoenix-the gorgeous picture of his wings-and his appearance in Paradise in his native majesty, (for it is in his graceful posture, after he alights, that he is chiefly compared to Mercury,) with that matchless accompaniment of his shaking his plumes, and diffusing a heavenly fragrance wide around. Compare Michael's descent, Gier. Liber. ix. 60.

"Dixerat. Ille patris magni parere parabat
Imperio; et primum pedibus talaria nectit
Aurea; quæ sublimem alis, sive æquora supra,
Seu terram, rapido pariter cum flamine portant,
Tum virgam capit: hac animas ille evocat Orco
Pallentes; alias sub Tartara tristia mittit;
Dat somnos adimitque, et lumina morte resignat;
Illa fretus agit ventos, et turbida tranat

Nubila jamque volans apicem et latera ardua cernit

Atlantis duri, cœlum qui vertice fulcit;

Atlantis, cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris

Piniferum caput et vento pulsatur et imbri.

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