"Here lies within this stony shade
Nature's darling; whom she made
Her fairest model, her brief story,
In him heaping all her glory."
On _green lap_, cf. Milton, _Song on May Morning_:
"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."
85. _Lucid Avon_. Cf. Seneca, _Thyest._ 129: "gelido flumine lucidus
Alpheos."
86. _The mighty mother_. That is, Nature. Pope, in the _Dunciad_, i.
1, uses the same expression in a satirical way:
"The Mighty Mother, and her Son, who brings
The Smithfield Muses to the ear of kings,
I sing."
See also Dryden, _Georgics_, i. 466:
"On the green turf thy careless limbs display,
And celebrate the mighty mother's day."
87. _The dauntless child_. Cf. Horace, _Od._ iii. 4, 20: "non sine
dis animosus infans." Wakefield quotes Virgil, _Ecl._ iv. 60:
"Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem." Mitford points out that
the identical expression occurs in Sandys's translation of Ovid,
_Met._ iv. 515:
"the child
Stretch'd forth its little arms, and on him smil'd."
See also Catullus, _In Nupt. Jun. et Manl._ 216:
"Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris e gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus,
Dulce rideat."