Song

Notes by William Bell, Comus (1890; Project Gutenberg #19819).

1. Line 1 Echo. In classical mythology she was a nymph whom Juno punished by preventing her from speaking before others or from being silent after others had spoken. She fell in love with Narcissus, and pined away until nothing remained of her but her voice. Compare the invocation to Echo in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels, i. 1. The lady's song, which has been described as "an address to the very Genius of Sound," is here very naturally introduced. The lady wishes to rouse the echoes of the wood in order to attract her brothers' notice, and she does so by addressing Echo, who grieves for the lost youth Narcissus as the lady grieves for her lost brothers.
2. Line 2 thy airy shell; the atmosphere. Comp. "the hollow round of Cynthia's seat," Hymn Nat. 103. The marginal reading in the MS. is cell. Some suppose that 'shell' is here used, like Lat. concha, because in classical times various musical instruments were made in the form of a shell.
3. Line 3 Meander's margent green. Maeander, a river of Asia Minor, remarkable for the windings of its course; hence the verb 'to meander,' and hence also (in Keightley's opinion) the mention of the river as a haunt of Echo. It is more probable, however, that, as the lady addresses Echo as the "Sweet Queen of Parley" and the unhappy lover of the lost Narcissus, the river is here mentioned because of its associations with music and misfortune. The Marsyas was a tributary of the Maeander, and the legend was that the flute upon which Marsyas played in his rash contest with Apollo was carried into the Maeander and, after being thrown on land, dedicated to Apollo, the god of song. Comp. Lyc. 58-63, where the Muses and misfortune are similarly associated by a reference to Orpheus, whose 'gory visage' and lyre were carried "down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore." Further, the Maeander is associated with the sorrows of the maiden Byblis, who seeks her lost brother Caunus (called by Ovid Maeandrius juvenis). [Since the above was written, Prof. J. W. Hales has given the following explanation of Milton's allusion: "The real reason is that the Meander was a famous haunt of swans, and the swan was a favourite bird with the Greek and Latin writers--one to whose sweet singing they perpetually allude" (Athenaeum, April 20, 1889).] 'Margent.' Marge and margin are forms of the same word.
4. Line 4 the violet-embroidered vale. The notion that flowers broider or ornament the ground is common in poetry: comp. Par. Lost, iv. 700: "Under foot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay Broidered the ground." In Lyc. 148, the flowers themselves wear 'embroidery.' The nightingale is made to haunt a violet-embroidered vale because these flowers are associated with love (see Jonson's Masque of Hymen) and with innocence (see Hamlet, iv. 5. 158: "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died"). Prof. Hales, however, thinks that some particular vale is here alluded to, and argues, with much acumen, that the poet referred to the woodlands close by Athens to the north-west, through which the Cephissus flowed, and where stood the birthplace of Sophocles, who sings of his native Colonus as frequented by nightingales. The same critic regards the epithet 'violet-embroidered' as a translation of the Greek +iostephanos+ (= crowned with violets), frequently applied by Aristophanes to Athens, of which Colonus was a suburb. Macaulay also refers to Athens as "the violet-crowned city." It is, at least, very probable that Milton might here associate the nightingale with Colonus, as he does in Par. Reg. iv. 245: see the following note.
5. Line 5 love-lorn nightingale, the nightingale whose loved ones are lost: comp. Virgil, Georg. iv. 511: "As the nightingale wailing in the poplar shade plains for her lost young, ... while she weeps the night through, and sitting on a bough, reproduces her piteous melody, and fills the country round with the plaints of her sorrow." Lorn and lost are cognate words, the former being common in the compound forlorn: see note, l. 39. Milton makes frequent allusion to the nightingale: in Il Penseroso it is 'Philomel'; in Par. Reg. iv. 245, it is 'the Attic bird'; and in Par. Lost viii. 518, it is 'the amorous bird of night.' He calls it the Attic bird in allusion to the story of Philomela, the daughter of Pandion, King of Athens. Near the Academy was Colonus, which Sophocles has celebrated as the haunt of nightingales (Browne). Philomela was changed, at her own prayer, into a nightingale that she might escape the vengeance of her brother-in-law Tereus. The epithet 'love-lorn,' however, seems to point to the legend of A{=e}don (Greek +aêdôn+, a nightingale), who, having killed her own son by mistake, was changed into a nightingale, whose mournful song was represented by the Greek poets as the lament of the mother for her child.
6. Line 6 her sad song mourneth, i.e. sings her plaintive melody. 'Sad song' forms a kind of cognate accusative.
7. Line 8 likest thy Narcissus. Narcissus, who failed to return the love of Echo, was punished by being made to fall in love with his own image reflected in a fountain: this he could never approach, and he accordingly pined away and was changed into the flower which bears his name. See the dialogue between Mercury and Echo in Cynthia's Revels, i. 1. Grammatically, likest is an adjective qualified adverbially by "(to) thy Narcissus": comp. Il Pens. 9, "likest hovering dreams."
8. Line 9 have hid. This is not a grammatical inaccuracy (as Warton thinks), but the subjunctive mood.
9. Line 11 Tell me but where, i.e. 'Only tell me where.'
10. Line 12 Sweet Queen of Parley, etc. 'Parley is conversation (Fr. parler, to speak): parlour, parole, palaver, parliament, parlance. etc., are cognate. Daughter of the Sphere, i.e. of the sphere which is her "airy shell" (l. 231): comp. "Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse" (At a Solemn Music, 2).
11. Line 14 give resounding grace, etc., i.e. add the charm of echo to the music of the spheres. The metrical structure of this song should be noted: the lines vary in length from two to six feet. The rhymes are few, and the effect is more striking owing to the consonance of shell, well with vale, nightingale; also of pair, where with are and sphere; and of have with cave. Masson regards this song as a striking illustration of Milton's free use of imperfect rhymes, even in his most musical passages.