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William Blake

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:

Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?

Or Love in a golden bowl?

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noun

One who, or that which, accelerates.

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66. Mitford quotes Spenser, _F. Q._:

41 lines
Thomas Gray·1716–1771
But gnawing Jealousy out of their sight,Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bite." 68. Wakefield quotes Milton, _Sonnet to Mr. Lawes_: "With praiseenough for Envy to look wan." 69. _Grim-visag'd, comfortless Despair_. Cf. Shakes. _Rich. III_. i.1: "Grim-visag'd War;" and _C. of E._ v. 1: "grim and comfortlessDespair." 76. _Unkindness' altered eye_. "An ungraceful elision" of thepossessive inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, _Hind andPanther_, iii.: "Affected Kindness with an alter'd face." 79. Gray quotes Dryden, _Pal. and Arc._: "Madness laughing in hisireful mood." Cf. Shakes. _Hen. VI._ iv. 2: "But rather moody mad;"and iii. 1: "Moody discontented fury." 81. _The vale of years_. Cf. _Othello_, iii. 3: "Declin'd Into thevale of years." 82. _Grisly_. Not to be confounded with _grizzly_. See Wb. 83. _The painful family of death_. Cf. Pope, _Essay on Man_, ii. 118:"Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;" and Dryden, _State ofInnocence_, v. 1: "With all the numerous family of Death." On thewhole passage cf. Milton, _P. L._ xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, _Æn._vi. 275. 86. _That every labouring sinew strains_. An example of the"correspondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (_Essay onCriticism_, 371), "The line too labours, and the words move slow." 90. _Slow-consuming Age_. Cf. Shenstone, _Love and Honour_: "Hisslow-consuming fires." 95. As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in _Comus_,359: "Peace, brother, be not over-exquisiteTo cast the fashion of uncertain evils;For grant they be so, while they rest unknownWhat need a man forestall his date of grief,And run to meet what he would most avoid?" 97. _Happiness too swiftly flies_. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil,_Geo._ iii. 66: "Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aeviPrima fugit." 98. _Thought would destroy their paradise_. Wakefield quotesSophocles, _Ajax_, 554: [Greek: En tôi phronein gar mêden hêdistosbios] ("Absence of thought is prime felicity").