550. ~barbarous~: comp. _Son._ xii. 3, "a _barbarous_ noise environs me Of
owls and cuckoos, etc."
551. ~listened them~. The omission of _to_ after verbs of hearing is
frequent in Shakespeare and others: comp. "To listen our purpose"; "List
a brief tale"; "hearken the end"; etc. (see Abbott, § 199). 'Them': this
refers to the _sounds_ implied in 'dissonance.'
552. ~unusual stop~. This refers to what happened at l. 145, and the "soft
and solemn-breathing sound" to l. 230.
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.