"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."
30. As Mitford remarks, _obscure_ and _poor_ make "a very imperfect
rhyme;" and the same might be said of _toil_ and _smile_.
33. Mitford suggests that Gray had in mind these verses from his
friend West's _Monody on Queen Caroline_:
"Ah, me! what boots us all our boasted power,
Our golden treasure, and our purple state;
They cannot ward the inevitable hour,
Nor stay the fearful violence of fate."
Hurd compares Cowley:
"Beauty, and strength, and wit, and wealth, and power,
Have their short flourishing hour;
And love to see themselves, and smile,
And joy in their pre-eminence a while:
Even so in the same land
Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers together stand;
Alas! Death mows down all with an impartial hand."
35. _Awaits_. The reading of the ed. of 1768, as of the Pembroke (and
probably the other) MS. _Hour_ is the subject, not the object, of the
verb.
36. Hayley, in the Life of Crashaw, _Biographia Britannica_, says
that this line is "literally translated from the Latin prose of
Bartholinus in his Danish Antiquities."
39. _Fretted_. The _fret_ is, strictly, an ornament used in classical
architecture, formed by small fillets intersecting each other at
right angles. Parker (_Glossary of Architecture_) derives the word
from the Latin _fretum_, a strait; and Hales from _ferrum_, iron,
through the Italian _ferrata_, an iron grating. It is more likely
(see Stratmann and Wb.) from the A. S. _frætu_, an ornament.
Cf. _Hamlet_, ii. 2:
"This majestical roof fretted with golden fire;"
and _Cymbeline_, ii. 4:
"The roof o' the chamber
With golden cherubins is fretted."