553. ~drowsy frighted~, _i.e._ drowsy and frighted. The noise of Comus's rout is here supposed to have kept the horses of night awake and in a state of drowsy agitation until the sudden calm put an end to their uneasiness. In Milton's corrected MS. we read 'drowsy flighted,' where the two words are not co-ordinate epithets but must be regarded as expressing one idea = flying drowsily; to express this some insert a hyphen. Comp. 'dewy-feathered,' _Il Pens._ 146, and others of Milton's remarkable compound adjectives. The reading in the text is that of the printed editions of 1637, '45, and '73. 554. ~Sleep~ (or Night) is represented as drawn by horses in a chariot with its curtains closely drawn. Comp. _Macbeth_, ii. l. 51, "curtained sleep." 555. 'The lady's song rose into the air so sweetly and imperceptibly that silence was taken unawares and so charmed that she would gladly have renounced her nature and existence for ever if her place could always be filled by such music.' Comp. _Par. Lost_, iv. 604, "She all night long her amorous descant sung; _Silence was pleased_"; also Jonson's _Vision of Delight_: "Yet let it like an odour rise To all the senses here, And fall like sleep upon their eyes, Or music in their ear." 558. ~took~, taken. Comp. l. 256 for a similar use of _take_, and compare 'forsook,' line 499, for the form of the word. 560. ~Still~, always. This use of _still_ is frequent in Elizabethan writers (Abbott, § 69). ~I was all ear~. Warton notes this expressive idiom (still current) in Drummond's 'Sonnet to the Nightingale,' and in _Tempest_, iv. l. 59, "all eyes." _All_ is an attribute of _I_. 561. ~create a soul~, etc., _i.e._ breathe life even into the dead: comp. _L'Alleg._ 144. Warton supposes that Milton may have seen a picture in an old edition of Quarles' _Emblems_, in which "a soul in the figure of an infant is represented within the ribs of a skeleton, as in its prison." _Rom._ vii. 24, "Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" 565. ~harrowed~, distracted, torn as by a _harrow_. This is probably the meaning, but there is a verb 'harrow' corrupted from 'harry,' to subdue; hence some read "harried with grief and fear." 567. ~How sweet ... how near~. This sentence contains two exclamations: this is a Greek construction. In English the idiom is "How sweet ... _and_ how near," etc. We may, however, render the line thus: "How sweet..., how near the deadly snare _is_!" 568. ~lawns~. 'Lawn' is always used by Milton to denote an open stretch of grassy ground, whereas in modern usage it is applied generally to a smooth piece of grass-grown land in front of a house. The origin of the word is disputed, but it seems radically to denote 'a clear space'; it is said to be cognate with _llan_ used as a prefix in the names of certain Welsh towns, _e.g._ Llandaff, Llangollen. In Chaucer it takes the form launde. 569. ~often trod by day~, which I have often trod by day, and therefore know well.