Forest'; hence the description of the soldiers from that district killed at Flodden as 'the flowers of the forest.'
l. 22. Cp. Hamilton of Bangour's allusion (Ode III. 43) to the appearance of winter on these heights;—
He wanders on the tops of Yare!'
l. 37. imps (Gr. ξμφυτος, Swed. ympa). See 'Faery Queene,' Book I. (Clarendon Press), note to Introd. The word means (1) a graft; (2) a scion of a noble house; (3) a little demon; (4) a mischievous child. The context implies that the last is the sense in which the word is used here. Cp. Beattie's 'Minstrel,' i. 17:—
Of squabbling imps,'
l. 50. round. Strictly speaking, a round is a circular dance in which the performers hold each other by the hands. The term, however, is fairly applicable to the frolicsome gambols of a group of lambs in a spring meadow. Certain rounds became famous enough to be individualised, as e.g. Sellenger's or St. Leger's round, mentioned in the May-day song, 'Come Lasses and Lads.' Cp. Macbeth, iv. 1; Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 2; and see note on Comus, l. 144, in 'English Poems of Milton,' vol. i. (Clarendon Press).
l. 53. Lockhart, in a foot-note to his edition of 'Marmion,' quotes from the 'Monthly Review' of May, 1808: 'The "chance and change" of nature—the vicissitudes which are observable in the moral as well as the physical part of the creation—have given occasion to more exquisite poetry than any other general subject. . . . The Ai, ai, tai Malaki of Moschus is worked up again to some advantage in the following passage— "To mute," &c.'
ll 61, 62. The inversion of reference in these lines is an illustration of the rhetorical figure 'chiasmus.' Cp. the arrangement of the demonstrative pronouns in these sentences from 'Kenilworth':—'Your eyes contradict your tongue. That speaks of a protector, willing and able to watch over you; but these tell me you are ruined.'
l. 64. Cp. closing lines of Wordsworth's 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality' (finished in 1806):—
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'
ll. 65-8. Nelson fell at Trafalgar, Oct. 21, 1805; Pitt died Jan. 23, 1806.
l. 72. Gadite wave. The epithet is derived from Gades, the Roman name of the modern Cadiz.
