The meaning of this word has completely changed. 24. =strook.= Caused to sound as on a stringed instrument. Compare Dryden in "Alexander's Feast": "Now strike the golden lyre again." 25. =noise.= A company of musicians under a leader. Used in this sense by both Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. 26. =close.= Cadence. See Dryden, "Fables": "At every _close_ she made, th' attending throng Replied, and bore the burden of the song." 27. =hollow round.= The sphere in which the moon has its motion. See notes 9 and 34. =Cynthia.= The moon. In the ancient mythology applied to Artemis, from Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos, her birthplace. 28. =its.= In all his poetry, Milton uses this word only three times. The other examples are in "Paradise Lost," I, 254, and IV, 814. This possessive form of the pronoun it was never used until the time of Shakespeare, who employs it five times in "A Winter's Tale," and once in "Measure for Measure"; it does not occur anywhere in the authorized version of the Bible. 29. Why are the Cherubim "helmed," while the Seraphim are "sworded"? Addison says, "Some of the rabbins tell us that the cherubims are a set of angels who know most, and the seraphims a set of angels who love most." Observe that the plural of cherub or of seraph may be formed in three ways: viz. cherubs, cherubim, cherubims; seraphs, seraphim, seraphims. 30. =unexpressive.= Inexpressible. See Shakespeare, "As You Like It": "The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she." Also Milton, "Lycidas," 176: "And hears the unexpressive nuptiall song." 31. =the sons of Morning sung.= See Job xxxviii. 4-7, the oldest reference to the "music of the spheres." See note 34, below. 32. =hinges.= Literally, a hinge is anything for hanging something upon. From A.-S. _hangian_. 33. =weltring.= Rolling, wallowing. See "Lycidas," 13. 34. =Ring out.= An allusion to the music of the spheres. See note 27, above. The theory of Pythagoras was that the distances between the heavenly bodies were determined by the laws of musical concord. "These orbs in their motion could not but produce a certain sound or note, depending upon their distances and velocities; and as these were regulated by harmonic laws, they necessarily formed as a whole a complete musical scale." "In the whorl of the distaff of necessity there are eight concentric whorls. These whorls represent respectively the sun and moon, the five planets, and the fixed stars. On each whorl sits a siren singing. Their eight tones make one exquisite harmony." Milton added a ninth whorl,--"that swift nocturnal and diurnal rhomb,"--and then spoke of the "ninefold harmony," as just below. This was a favorite idea with the poets. "Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres, Listening the lordly music flowing from The illimitable years." --_Tennyson_, _Ode to Memory_.