nding up," etc.

12. _Ah, fields belov'd in vain!_ Mitford remarks that this
expression has been considered obscure, and adds the following
explanation: "The poem is written in the character of one who
contemplates this life as a scene of misfortune and sorrow, from
whose fatal power the brief sunshine of youth is supposed to be
exempt. The fields are _beloved_ as the scene of youthful pleasures,
and as affording the promise of happiness to come; but this promise
never was fulfilled. Fate, which dooms man to misery, soon
overclouded these opening prospects of delight. That is in vain
beloved which does not realize the expectations it held out. No fruit
but that of disappointment has followed the blossoms of a thoughtless
hope."

13. _Where once my careless childhood stray'd_. Wakefield cites
Thomson, _Winter_, 6:

"with frequent foot
Pleas'd have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs'd by careless Solitude I liv'd,
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleas'd have I wander'd," etc.

15. _That from ye blow_. In Early English _ye_ is nominative, _you_
accusative (objective). This distinction, though observed in our
version of the Bible, was disregarded by Elizabethan writers (Shakes.
_Gr._ 236), as it has occasionally been by the poets even to our own
day. Cf. Shakes. _Hen. VIII._ iii. 1: "The more shame for ye; holy
men I thought ye;" Milton, _Comus_, 216: "I see ye visibly," etc.
Dryden, in a couplet quoted by Guest, uses both forms in the same
line:

"What gain you by forbidding it to tease ye?
It now can neither trouble _you_ nor please ye."

19. Gray quotes Dryden, _Fable on Pythag. Syst._: "And bees their
honey redolent of spring."

21. _Say, father Thames_, etc. This invocation is taken from Green's
_Grotto_:

"Say, father Thames, whose gentle pace
Gives leave to view, what beauties grace
Your flowery banks, if you have seen."

Cf. Dryden, _Annus Mirabilis_, st. 232: "Old father Thames raised up
his reverend head."

Dr. Johnson, in his hypercritical comments on this Ode, says: "His
supplication to Father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or
tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better
means of knowing than himself." To which Mitford replies by asking,
"Are we by this rule to judge the following passage in the twentieth
chapter of _Rasselas_? 'As they were sitting together, the princess
cast her eyes on the river that fl