99 127 _From Prison_: to which his active support of Charles I twice brought the high-spirited writer. L. 7 _Gods_: thus in the original; Lovelace, in his fanciful way, making here a mythological allusion. _Birds_, commonly substituted, is without authority. St. 3, l. 1 _committed_: to prison. 100 128 St. 2 l. 4 _blue-god_: Neptune. 104 133 _Waly waly_: an exclamation of sorrow, the root and the pronunciation of which are preserved in the word _caterwaul_. _Brae_, hillside: _burn_, brook: _busk_, adorn. _Saint Anton's Well_: below Arthur's Seat by Edinburgh. _Cramasie_, crimson. 105 134 This beautiful example of early simplicity is found in a Song-book of 1620. 106 135 _burd_, maiden. 107 136 _corbies_, crows: _fail_, turf: _hause_, neck: _theek_, thatch.--If not in their origin, in their present form this, with the preceding poem and 133, appear due to the Seventeenth Century, and have therefore been placed in Book II. 108 137 The poetical and the prosaic, after Cowley's fashion, blend curiously in this deeply-felt elegy. 112 141 Perhaps no poem in this collection is more delicately fancied, more exquisitely finished. By placing his description of the Fawn in a young girl's mouth, Marvell has, as it were, legitimated that abundance of 'imaginative hyperbole' to which he is always partial: he makes us feel it natural that a maiden's favourite should be whiter than milk, sweeter than sugar--'lilies without, roses within,' The poet's imagination is justified in its seeming extravagance by the intensity and unity with which it invests his picture. 113 142 The remark quoted in the note to No. 65 applies equally to these truly wonderful verses. Marvell here throws himself into the very soul of the _Garden_ with the imaginative intensity of Shelley in his _West Wind_.--This poem appears also as a translation in Marvell's works. The most striking verses in it, here quoted as the book is rare, answer more or less to stanzas 2 and 6:-- Alma Quies, teneo te! et te, germana Quietis, Simplicitas! vos ergo diu per templa, per urbes Quaesivi, regum perque alta palatia, frustra: Sed vos hortorum per opaca silentia, longe Celarunt plantae virides, et concolor umbra. 115 143 St. 3 _tutties_: nosegays. St. 4 _silly_: simple. _L'Allégro_ and _Il Penseroso_. It is a striking proof of Milton's astonishing power, that these, the earliest great Lyrics of the Landscape in our language, should still remain supreme in their style for range, variety, and melodious beauty. The Bright and the Thoughtful aspects of Nature and of Life are their subjects: but each is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian manner.--With that of _L'Allégro_ may be compared a similar mythe in the first Section of the first Book of S. Marmion's graceful _Cupid and Psyche_, 1637.