Return to text.
178 songs of praise/gladness
Return to text.
179 robed
Return to text.
180 eyes
Return to text.
181 hundred-headed fire-breathing giant, a serpent below the waist
Return to text.
182 coils
Return to text.
183 eastern
Return to text.
184 separate, individual
Return to text.
185 fairies
Return to text.
186 labyrinth (as in a fairy ring?)
Return to text.
187 long and wearisome (used in a jocund rather than literal sense)
Return to text.
188 youngest-born/produced
Return to text.
189 i.e., wearing gleaming body armor
Return to text.
190 ready to be useful [four syllables, first and third accented]
Return to text.
191 once, formerly, some time ago
Return to text.
192 to sing in counterpoint
Return to text.
193 fasten upon, clutch, take hold of
Return to text.
194 gravest, most severe
Return to text.
195 peril, danger, risk
Return to text.
196 creature, being
Return to text.
197 temporary dwelling, place, abode
Return to text.
198 put up with, endure
Return to text.
199 Phoebus Apollo, god of (among other things) poetry
Return to text.
200 Marco Girolamo Vida’s Christiad; he was a native of Cremona
Return to text.
201 proper to
Return to text.
202 subdued
Return to text.
203 Ezekiel
Return to text.
204 Jerusalem (Shalem = ancient Semitic god)
Return to text.
205 anxiously thoughtful
Return to text.
206 absorption
Return to text.
207 mood? seizure?
Return to text.
208 treasures
Return to text.
209 i.e., as in prayer
Return to text.
210 mass of stone
Return to text.
211 mark, engrave
Return to text.
212 lamenting
Return to text.
213 vivid, fresh, brightly gay
Return to text.
214 letters of the alphabet
Return to text.
215 i.e., infections being carried by some germlike agent, the poet’s tears of sorrow, like a sort of sickly semen, spawn “a race of mourners” on that which carries water down on men, namely, a cloud
Return to text.
216 forerunner (literally)
Return to text.
217 attiring, arraying
Return to text.
218 valley, hollow
Return to text.
219 Sonnets 2–6, written in Italian, are not here included
Return to text.
220 arranged by compositional order rather than chronologically; dates of composition are, as usual, indicated with the title of each poem
Return to text.
221 twig, shoot
Return to text.
222 gracious, favorably inclined
Return to text.
223 song
Return to text.
224 soon/soon enough (opportunely)
Return to text.
225 barbarous, ignorant
Return to text.
226 the cuckoo, linked to sexual jealousy/betrayal
Return to text.
227 retinue, attendants
Return to text.
228 ingenious, cunning, tricky
Return to text.
229 speed, impetus
Return to text.
230 are invested with
Return to text.
231 yet? always?
Return to text.
232 equal, proportionate
Return to text.
233 destiny
Return to text.
234 low
Return to text.
235 [trisyllabic]
Return to text.
236 luck, fortuitous circumstance
Return to text.
237 In October 1642, during the early days of England’s civil war, the royalist army almost reached London; Milton’s house lay just outside the city walls
Return to text.
238 Milton himself
Return to text.
239 repay
Return to text.
240 noble, honorable, gentlemanly
Return to text.
241 dwelling
Return to text.
242 Alexander the Great: Emathia was a Macedonian province
Return to text.
243 Pindar, Greek poet
Return to text.
244 music: in Athenian Greece, the chorus referred to in the next footnote would have been sung
Return to text.
245 Euripides: a chorus from the play is said to have persuaded the Spartans not to sack Athens, in 404B.C.
Return to text.
246 the lady is unknown
Return to text.
247 “I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him” (Song of Solomon 3:2)
Return to text.
248 conspicuously
Return to text.
249 “And Jesus…said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things. But one good thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41–42); see also Ruth 1:8–18
Return to text.
250 are arrogant, presumptuous
Return to text.
251 gnaw, wear away at
Return to text.
252 compassion, pity
Return to text.
253 concern
Return to text.
254 follows, waits upon
Return to text.
255 Lady Margaret, daughter of the Earl of Marlborough
Return to text.
256 Marlborough died four days after King Charles dissolved his third Parliament, in 1629
Return to text.
257 Philip of Macedon’s defeat of Thebes and Athens in 338 B.C.
Return to text.
258 Chaeronéa marked the end of Greek independence; Isocrates committed suicide four days after hearing the news
Return to text.
259 recount, tell
Return to text.
260 block of wood attached to the feet of men or horses, to impede movement
Return to text.
261 by the writing of two tracts on divorce, one of which was entitled Tetrachordon: see Sonnet 12, below
Return to text.
262 surrounds, besieges, besets
Return to text.
263 rustics, boors
Return to text.
264 Apollo and Diana, twin children of Latona and Jupiter; peasants who refused water to Latona were turned into frogs by Jupiter
Return to text.
265 yet
Return to text.
266 Milton’s 1645 book on divorce was shaped by the “foure chief places in Scripture which treat of Marriage”
Return to text.
267 read, studied
Return to text.
268 line
Return to text.
269 in the time that
Return to text.
270 James Gordon, Lord Aboyne, Scots royalist
Return to text.
271 Alexander MacDonnell, known also as MacColki
tto and MacGillespie, general in the royalist army of James Graham, Earl Montrose
Return to text.
272 see footnote 50, above
Return to text.
273 see footnote 50, above
Return to text.
274 Roman rhetorician
Return to text.
275 first professor of Greek at Cambridge, and tutor to Prince (later King) Edward
Return to text.
276 Henry Lawes, 1596–1662, master musician, who composed the music for Comus
Return to text.
277 rhythmical
Return to text.
278 measure out, extend
Return to text.
279 proper, right, correct
Return to text.
280 Midas having judged Pan a better flutist than Apollo, Apollo gave him donkey ears
Return to text.
281 perpetrating
Return to text.
282 melody, tune
Return to text.
283 musician of Florence, Dante’s friend, who appears, and sings, in Purgatorio 2:76ff.
Return to text.
284 Catherine, wife of George Thomason, London bookseller and publisher; died in 1646
Return to text.
285 melodies
Return to text.
286 Sir Thomas Fairfax, commander in chief of the Parliamentarian army
Return to text.
287 Scotland
Return to text.
288 a covenant of friendship made in 1643 between Parliament and the Scots was broken a month later by a Scottish invasion
Return to text.
289 to engraft new feathers onto damaged wings
Return to text.
290 the covenant with Parliament, being unserpentlike, broke Scotland’s “serpent wings,” but invading England and breaking that covenant restored her native serpentlike qualities
Return to text.
291 plunder, pillage, robbery
Return to text.
292 slander, defamations, calumnies
Return to text.
293 coarse
Return to text.
294 battle of 1648
Return to text.
295 soaked
Return to text.
296 battle of 1650
Return to text.
297 battle of 1651 [bisyllabic, as if written “WOOS ter”]
Return to text.
298 mouth, appetite
Return to text.
299 Sir Henry Vane (the Younger), statesman and councilor
Return to text.
300 i.e., the togas worn by the senators of Rome
Return to text.
301 Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, invaded Rome in the third century B.C.
Return to text.
302 Hannibal of Carthage, in Africa, also invaded Rome in the third century B.C.
Return to text.
303 purpose, intent
Return to text.
304 pun on “Holland”
Return to text.
305 gibe at the spelling and pronunciation of Dutch
Return to text.
306 equipment
Return to text.
307 the Vaudois, Swiss Protestants, attacked and killed by Catholic partisans in 1655
Return to text.
308 [verb]
Return to text.
309 sheep pen: here, of course, metaphorical
Return to text.
310 the Pope
Return to text.
311 flee
Return to text.
312 the papacy
Return to text.
313 used up, exhausted
Return to text.
314 before
Return to text.
315 in biblical times, “talent” also meant a monetary unit: see Matthew 25:14ff, the parable of the talents
Return to text.
316 devoted, bound
Return to text.
317 bring/show to God [verb]
Return to text.
318 as per the parable of the talents
Return to text.
319 scold, rebuke
Return to text.
320 hurry
Return to text.
321 Edward Lawrence, member of Parliament; his father, Henry Lawrence, was president of Cromwell’s Council of State
Return to text.
322 roads, lanes, paths
Return to text.
323 boggy, slushy, muddy
Return to text.
324 gloomy, dark, dismal, dull
Return to text.
325 a day that
Return to text.
326 winter, with its ice
Return to text.
327 which is gaining on us/coming closer and closer
Return to text.
328 the west wind
Return to text.
329 “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin”: Matthew 6:28
Return to text.
330 dainty, elegant
Return to text.
331 Italian
Return to text.
332 afford? spare time for? leave off, forbear?
Return to text.
333 introduce, or delay
Return to text.
334 Cyriack Skinner, 1627–1700, Milton’s student, friend, helper, and more than likely his amanuensis
Return to text.
335 Sir Edward Coke, 1552–1634, chief justice of the King’s Bench and a legendary figure in the law to this day
Return to text.
336 goddess of justice
Return to text.
337 petty, insignificant
Return to text.
338 as a judge handing down (“pronouncing”) decisions
Return to text.
339 notably The Institutes of the Law of England
Return to text.
340 i.e., other lawyers, members of the bar
Return to text.
341 twist, stretch, alter
Return to text.
342 soak, drown
Return to text.
343 moves
Return to text.
344 Sweden
Return to text.
345 speedily, in good time
Return to text.
346 sober, sound, practical
Return to text.
347 deprived
Return to text.
348 useless, inactive; unemployed
Return to text.
349 lessen, reduce
Return to text.
350 the smallest of small amounts
Return to text.
351 overworked/employed/worked/used
Return to text.
352 probably, but not certainly, Milton’s second wife, Katherine Woodcock, to whom he was married in 1656, and who died in 1658, not long after giving birth to a daughter
Return to text.
353 Admetus, her husband, had his life extended in return for her voluntarily dying in his stead; Hercules, Jove’s son, successfully wrestled with Death, and then brought her back to life
Return to text.
354 stain, blemish
Return to text.
355 see Leviticus 12:5
Return to text.
356 limitation, reserve
Return to text.
357 clothed, dressed
Return to text.
358 bent, leaned
Return to text.
359 the Muses were the daughters of Memory
Return to text.
360 slow-striving
Return to text.
361 prosody
Return to text.
362 invaluable, priceless
Return to text.
363 inspired by Apollo, god of poetry, who lived in the city of Delphi
Return to text.
&nb
sp; 364 (1) heavy, (2) profound: see footnote 46, below
Return to text.
365 (1) mold, cast, copy (as in printing), (2) effect, influence
Return to text.
366 depriving, stripping
Return to text.
367 (1) stone, such as is used in tombs and gravestones, or rigid/cold/white like marble, (2) the marbled pattern or paper used in ornamenting/binding books
Return to text.
368 imagining
Return to text.
369 buried (metaphorical: “absorbed”)
Return to text.
370 splendor, magnificence
Return to text.
371 deliveryman
Return to text.
372 temporary idleness
Return to text.
373 also a renter of horses: the proverbial phrase “Hobson’s choice” stems from his insisting that a would-be customer either accepted whatever horse was nearest to the door or else got no horse at all
Return to text.
374 belt or band (leather or cloth) around a horse’s body, securing saddle/pack/etc.; possibly also a pun on Hobson’s own girt(h) and Death having broken him
Return to text.
375 roads
Return to text.
376 muddy ditch
Return to text.
377 trickster, con man
Return to text.
378 entire
Return to text.
379 to dodge = to give (someone) the slip, to avoid, to baffle
Return to text.
380 inn in London, located on a main thoroughfare
Return to text.
381 habitual path, route
Return to text.
382 Death = the “kind…chamberlain,” or inn servant
Return to text.
383 a candle—but Death extinguishes a person’s light
Return to text.
384 remained?
Return to text.
385 decompose, die
Return to text.
386 the indestructible stuff of which stars and other heavenly bodies are formed
Return to text.
387 just as the stars revolve, so too did Hobson, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth….
Return to text.
388 stopped
Return to text.
389 measures, assigns values to
Return to text.
390 any mechanical contrivance/machine
Return to text.
391 primary cause, which was movement
Return to text.
392 at once—but also “straight” in the sense of no longer revolving
Return to text.
393 one sense of the word “breathe,” as in “to take breath,” is “to rest”
Return to text.
394 “term” = when college is in session, “vacation” = when college is not in session
Return to text.
395 “drive the time away” as in “killing time”—but he was literally a “driver” (coachman)
Return to text.
396 (1) brought to life, (2) made to go faster
Return to text.
397 “fetch and carry” = common phraseology
Return to text.
398 abolished, done away with—but also “put down” in the ground, buried
The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems Page 77