the Thracian women tore to pieces under the excitement of their
Bacchanalian orgies. The gory visage floated down the Hebrus and through
the AEgean Sea to the island of Lesbos.

64. what boots it: of what use is it?

64-66. What good are we going to derive from this unremitting devotion to
study?

67-69. Would it not be better to abandon ourselves to social enjoyment,
and to lives of frivolous trifling? Amaryllis and Neaera are stock names
of shepherdesses.

70-72. Understand clear, as applied to spirit, to mean "pure, guileless,
unsophisticated." Sir Henry Wotton, in his Panegyric to King Charles,
says of King James I.,--"I will not deny his appetite of glory, which
generous minds do ever latest part from." Love of fame, according to the
poet, is the motive that prompts the scholar to live as an ascetic and to
persevere in toilsome labor. This love of fame is an infirmity, but not a
debasing one: it leaves the mind noble. Remember, however, that the
author of the Imitation of Christ prayed, _Da mihi nesciri_.

75. the blind Fury with the abhorred shears. Milton here seems to ascribe
to the Furies (Erinyes) the function belonging to the Fates (Parcae,
Moirae). The three Fates were Klotho, the Spinner; Lachesis, the Assigner
of lots; and Atropos, the Unchanging. It was the duty of Atropos to cut
the thread of life at the appointed time.

A querulous thought comes to the poet's mind. Our lives are obscure and
laborious, sustained only by the hope of future fame; but before we
attain our reward, comes death, and our ambition is brought to naught.

76-77. But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling
ears. The Fury cannot destroy the praise, which necessarily belongs to
doing well. Praise here means the essential praise, which naturally
inheres in excellence, and not the being talked about by men.

The speaker is now Phoebus, the august god Apollo, the pure one, who
protects law and order, and promotes whatever is good and beautiful; who
reveals the will of Zeus, and presides over prophecy.

Phoebus has now an admonition to give and he touches the poet's ears; as
in Virgil, Eclogue IV 3,--_Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit_, "The
Cynthian twitched my ear and warned me."

79. in the glistering foil Set off. See Shakespeare, Richard III. V 3
250,--"A base foul stone, made precious by the foil of England's chair."

85-86. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding
Mincius. Arethusa