P. [28]. Vergivian wave (Lat. Vergivium salum): the Irish Sea.
P. [28]. it is not my care to revisit the reedy Cam, etc.: this was the period of his rustication from Christ's College, Cambridge, due, it seems, to some difficulty which Milton had with his tutor, Mr. Chappell.
P. [28]. the tearful exile in the Pontic territory: Ovid, who was relegated (rather than exiled) to Tomi, a town on the Euxine.
P. [28]. Maro: the Latin poet, Publius Virgilius Maro.
P. [29]. or the unhappy boy . . . or the fierce avenger: as Masson suggests, the allusions here may be to Shakespeare's Romeo and the Ghost in Hamlet.
P. [29]. the house of Pelops, etc.: subjects of the principal Greek tragedies.
P. [29]. the arms of living Pelops: an allusion to the ivory shoulder of Pelops, by which, when he was restored to life after having been served up at a feast of the gods, given by his father Tantalus, the shoulder consumed by Ceres was replaced.
P. [30]. thy own flower: the anemone into which Adonis was turned by Venus, after his dying of a wound received from a wild boar during the chase.
P. [30]. alternate measures: the alternate hexameters and pentameters of the Elegy.