"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."

85. _Lucid Avon_. Cf. Seneca, _Thyest._ 129: "gelido flumine lucidus
Alpheos."

86. _The mighty mother_. That is, Nature. Pope, in the _Dunciad_, i.
1, uses the same expression in a satirical way:

"The Mighty Mother, and her Son, who brings
The Smithfield Muses to the ear of kings,
I sing."

See also Dryden, _Georgics_, i. 466:

"On the green turf thy careless limbs display,
And celebrate the mighty mother's day."

87. _The dauntless child_. Cf. Horace, _Od._ iii. 4, 20: "non sine
dis animosus infans." Wakefield quotes Virgil, _Ecl._ iv. 60:
"Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem." Mitford points out that
the identical expression occurs in Sandys's translation of Ovid,
_Met._ iv. 515:

"the child
Stretch'd forth its little arms, and on him smil'd."

See also Catullus, _In Nupt. Jun. et Manl._ 216:

"Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris e gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus,
Dulce rideat."

91. _These golden keys_. Cf. Young, _Resig._:

"Nature, which favours to the few
All art beyond imparts,
To him presented at his birth
The key of human hearts."

Wakefield cites _Comus_, 12:

"Yet some there be, that with due steps aspire
To lay their hands upon that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity."

See also _Lycidas_, 110:

"Two massy keys he bore of metals twain;
The golden opes, the iron shuts amain."

93. _Of horror_. A MS. variation is "Of terror."

94. _Or ope the sacred source_. In a letter to Dr. Wharton, Sept. 7,
1757, Gray mentions, among other criticisms upon this ode, that "Dr.
Akenside criticises opening a _source_ with a _key_." But, as Mitford
remarks, Akenside himself in his _Ode on Lyric Poetry_ has, "While I
so late _unlock_ thy purer _springs_," and in his _Pleasures of
Imagination_, "I _unlock_ the _springs_ of ancient wisdom."

95. _Nor second he_, etc. "Milton" (Gray).

96, 97. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ vii. 12:

"Up led by thee,
Into the heaven of heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air."

98. _The flaming bounds_, etc. Gray quotes Lucretius, i. 74:
"Flammantia moenia mundi." Cf. also Horace, _Epist._ i. 14, 9: "amat
spatiis obstantia rumpere claustra."

99. Gray quotes _Ezekiel_ i. 20, 26, 28. See also Milton, _At a
Solemn Music_,