England's Antiphon, George MacDonald [ready to read books TXT] 📗

keep it calm.

[110] The morning star.

[111] The God of shepherds especially, but the God of all nature-the All in all, for Pan means the All .

[112] Milton here uses the old Ptolemaic theory of a succession of solid crystal concentric spheres, in which the heavenly bodies were fixed, and which revolving carried these with them. The lowest or innermost of these spheres was that of the moon. "The hollow round of Cynthia's seat" is, therefore, this sphere in which the moon sits.

[113] That cannot be expressed or described.

[114] By hinges he means the axis of the earth, on which it turns as on a hinge. The origin of hinge is hang . It is what anything hangs on.

[115] This is an apostrophe to the nine spheres ( see former note ), which were believed by the ancients to send forth in their revolutions a grand harmony, too loud for mortals to hear. But no music of the lower region can make up full harmony without the bass of heaven's organ. The
music of the spheres was to Milton the embodiment of the theory of the universe. He uses the symbol often.

[116] Consort is the right word scientifically. It means the fitting together of sounds according to their nature. Concert , however, is not wrong. It is even more poetic than consort , for it means a striving together , which is the idea of all peace: the strife is together , and not of one against the other. All harmony is an ordered, a divine strife. In the contest of music, every tone restrains its foot and bows its head to the rest in holy dance.

[117] Symphony is here used for chorus , and quite correctly; for
symphony is a voicing together . To this symphony of the angels the spheres and the heavenly organ are the accompaniment.

[118] Die of the music.

[119] Not merely swings , but lashes about .

[120] Full of folds or coils.

[121] The legend concerning this cessation of the oracles associates it with the Crucifixion. Milton in The Nativity represents it as the consequence of the very presence of the infant Saviour. War and lying are banished together.

[122] The genius is the local god, the god of the place as a place.

[123] The Lars were the protecting spirits of the ancestors of the family; the Lemures were evil spirits, spectres, or bad ghosts. But the notions were somewhat indefinite.

[124] Flamen was the word used for priest when the Romans spoke of the priest of any particular divinity. Hence the peculiar power in the last line of the stanza.

[125] Jupiter Ammon, worshipped in Libya, in the north of Africa, under the form of a goat. "He draws in his horn."

[126] The Syrian Adonis.

[127] Frightful, horrible, as, a grisly bear .

[128] Isis, Orus, Anubis, and Osiris, all Egyptian divinities-the last worshipped in the form of a bull.

[129] No rain falls in Egypt.

[130] Last-born: the star in the east.

[131] Bright-armoured.

[132] Ready for what service may arise.

[133] The with we should now omit, for when we use it we mean the opposite of what is meant here.

[134] It is the light of the soul going out from the eyes, as certainly as the light of the world coming in at the eyes that makes things seen.

[135] The action by which a body attacked collects force by opposition.

[136] Cut roughly through.

[137] Intransitively used. They touch each other.

[138] Self-desire, which is death's pit, &c.

[139] Which understood.

[140] How unpleasant conceit can become. The joy of seeing the Saviour was stolen because they gained it in the absence of the sun!

[141] A trisyllable.

[142] His garland.

[143] The "sunny seed" in their hearts.

[144] From tine or tind , to set on fire. Hence tinder .

[145] The body of Jesus.

[146] Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37. The word time must be associated both with progress and prayer -his walking-time and prayer-time.

[147] This is an allusion to the sphere-music: the great heavens is a clock whose hours are those when Jesus retires to his Father; and to these hours the sphere-music gives the chime.

[148] He continues his poetic synonyms for the night.

[149] "Behold I stand at the door and knock."

[150] A monosyllable.

[151] Often used for chambers .

[152] "The creation looks for the light, thy shadow?" Or, "The light looks for thy shadow, the sun"?

[153] Perforce : of necessity.

[154] He does not mean his fellows, but his bodily nature.

[155] Savourest?

[156] The first I ever saw of its hymns was on a broad-sheet of Christmas Carols, with coloured pictures, printed in Seven Dials.

[157] They passed through twenty editions, not to mention one lately published ( by Daniel Sedgwick, of 81, Sun-street, Bishopsgate, a man who, concerning hymns and their writers, knows more than any other man I have met ), from which, carefully edited, I have gathered all my
information , although I had known the book itself for many years.

[158] The animal spirits of the old physiologists.

[159] In the following five lines I have adopted the reading of the first edition, which, although a little florid, I prefer to the scanty two lines of the later.

[160] False in feeling, nor like God at all, although a ready pagan representation of him. There is much of the pagan left in many Christians-poets too.

[161] Insisting-persistent .

[162] Great cloudy ridges, one rising above the other, like a grand stair up to the heavens. See Wordsworth's note .

[163] The mountain.

[164] These two lines are just the symbol for the life of their author.

[165] From the rose-light on the snow of its peak.

[166] They all flow from under the glaciers, fed by their constant melting.

[167] Turning for contrast to the glaciers, which he apostrophizes in the next line.

[168] Antecedent, peaks .

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Publication Date: 05-21-2008

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