"The cheerful cock, the sad night's trumpeter, Wayting upon the rising of the sunne; The wandering swallow with her broken song," etc. 20. _Their lowly bed_. Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave--a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for the latter." 21. Cf. Lucretius, iii. 894: "Jam jam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor Optima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent;" and Horace, _Epod._ ii. 39: "Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvet Domum atque dulces liberos * * * * * * * Sacrum vetustis exstruat lignis focum Lassi sub adventum viri," etc. Mitford quotes Thomson, _Winter_, 311: "In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence." Wakefield cites _The Idler_, 103: "There are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, _this is the last_." 22. _Ply her evening care_. Mitford says, "To _ply a care_ is an expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the rhyme _share_." Hales remarks: "This is probably the kind of phrase which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the _Elegy_ unintelligible. Compare his own 'And she I cherished _turned her wheel_ Beside an English fire.'" 23. _No children run_, etc. Hales quotes Burns, _Cotter's Saturday Night_, 21: "Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through To meet their Dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee." 24. Among Mitford's MS. variations we find "coming kiss." Wakefield compares Virgil, _Geo._ ii. 523: "Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;" and Mitford adds from Dryden, "Whose little arms about thy legs are cast, And climbing for a kiss prevent their mother's haste." Cf. Thomson, _Liberty_, iii. 171: "His little children climbing for a kiss." 26. _The stubborn glebe_. Cf. Gay, _Fables_, ii. 15: "'Tis mine to tame the stubborn glebe." _Broke_=broken, as often in poetry, especially in the Elizabethan writers. See Abbott, _Shakes. Gr._ 343. 27. _Drive their team afield_. Cf. _Lycidas_, 27: "We drove afield;" and Dryden,_ Virgil's Ecl._ ii. 38: "With me to drive afield." 28. _Their sturdy stroke_. Cf. Spenser, _Shep. Kal._ Feb.: "But to the roote bent his sturdy stroake, And made many wounds in the wast [wasted] Oake;" and Dryden, _Geo._ iii. 639: "Labour him with many a sturdy stroke."