s
here employed, in conformity to the mythology of the Greeks, as the
source of creation and beauty."

3. _Long-expecting_. Waiting long for the spring. Sometimes
incorrectly printed "long-expected." Cf. Dryden, _Astraea Redux_,
132: "To flowers that in its womb expecting lie."

4. _The purple year_. Cf. the _Pervigilium Veneris_, 13: "Ipsa gemmis
purpurantem pingit annum floribus;" Pope, _Pastorals_, i. 28: "And
lavish Nature paints the purple year;" and Mallet, _Zephyr_: "Gales
that wake the purple year."

5. _The Attic warbler_. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird,"
either because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend
that Philomela (or, as some say, Procne), the daughter of a king of
Attica, was changed into a nightingale. Cf. Milton's description of
Athens (_P. R._ iv. 245):

"where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long."

Cf. Ovid, _Hal._ 110: "Attica avis verna sub tempestate queratus;"
and Propertius, ii. 16, 6: "Attica volucris."

_Pours her throat_ is a metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_,
iii. 33: "Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?"

6, 7. Cf. Thomson, _Spring_, 577:

"From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
The symphony of spring."

9, 10. Cf. Milton, _Comus_, 989:

"And west winds with musky wing
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassia's balmy smells."

12. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ iv. 245: "Where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd
the noontide bowers;" Pope, _Eloisa_, 170: "And breathes a browner
horror on the woods;" Thomson, _Castle of Indolence_, i. 38: "Or
Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls."

According to Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. p. 241, Amer. ed.)
there is no brown in nature. After remarking that Dante "does not
acknowledge the existence of the colour of _brown_ at all," he goes
on to say: "But one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this,
I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colourists,
watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly and by mere
accident, after we had been talking about other things, 'Do you know
I have found that there is no _brown_ in nature? What we call brown
is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be
represented by umber, unless altered by contrast.' It is curious how
far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it
illustrates and confirms the mediaeval sense of hue," etc.

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