We may quote also his _Vision of Sir Launfal_:
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It seemed the dark castle had gathered allThose shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wallIn his siege of three hundred summers long," etc. 54. Gray's note here is as follows: "Extensive influence of poeticgenius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations; its connectionwith liberty and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See theErse, Norwegian, and Welsh fragments; the Lapland and Americansongs.]" He also quotes Virgil, _Æn._ vi. 796: "Extra anni solisquevias," and Petrarch, _Canz._ 2: "Tutta lontana dal camin del sole."Cf. also Dryden, _Thren. August._ 353: "Out of the solar walk andHeaven's highway;" _Ann. Mirab._ st. 160: "Beyond the year, and outof Heaven's highway;" _Brit. Red._: "Beyond the sunny walks andcircling year;" also Pope, _Essay on Man_, i. 102: "Far as the solarwalk and milky way." 56. _Twilight gloom_. Wakefield quotes Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 188:"The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn." 57. Wakefield says, "It almost chills one to read this verse." TheMS. variations are "buried native's" and "chill abode." 60. _Repeat_ [_their chiefs_, etc.]. Sing of them again and again. 61. _In loose numbers_, etc. Cf. Milton, _L'All._ 133: "Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,Warble his native wood-notes wild;" and Horace, _Od._ iv. 2, 11: "numerisque ferturLege solutis." 62. _Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs_. Cf. _P. L._ ix. 1115: "Such of lateColumbus found the American, so girtWith feather'd cincture." 64. _Glory pursue_. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verbafter the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Wartoncompares Homer, _Il._ v. 774: [Greek: hêchi rhoas Simoeis sumballeton êde Skamandros.] Dugald Stewart (_Philos. of Human Mind_) says: "I cannot helpremarking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in thisexquisite stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so asto arrest his attention to every successive picture, till it has timeto produce its proper impression." 65. _Freedom's holy flame_. Cf. Akenside, _Pleas. of Imag._ i. 468:"Love's holy flame." [Illustration: THE VALE OF TEMPE.] 66. "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy toEngland. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante orof Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled inItaly, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italianwriters; Milton improved on them: but this school expired soon afterthe Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which hassubsisted ever since" (Gray). _Delphi's steep_. Cf. Milton, _Hymn on Nativ._ 178: "the steep ofDelphos;" _P. L._ i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes. andMilton prefer the mediæval form _Delphos_ to the more usual _Delphi_.Delphi was at the foot of the southern uplands of Parnassus which end"in a precipitous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peaknamed the Phædriades, from their glittering appearance as they facedthe rays of the sun" (Smith's _Anc. Geog._). 67. _Isles_, etc. Cf. Byron: "The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!Where burning Sappho loved and sung," etc. 68. _Ilissus_. This river, rising on the northern slope of Hymettus,flows through the east side of Athens. 69. _Mæander's amber waves_. Cf. Milton, _P. L._ iii. 359: "Rollso'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;" _P. R._ iii. 288: "There Susaby Choaspes, amber stream." See also Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 520: "Puriorelectro campum petit amnis." Callimachus (_Cer._ 29) has [Greek:alektrinon hudôr].
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