[33. trip it, as you go.] So in Shakespeare, “I’ll queen it no inch further; Rather than fool it so; I’ll go brave it at the court, lording it in London streets.”
[41.] With this line begins a series of illustrations of the unreproved pleasures which L’Allegro is going to enjoy during a day of leisure. At first the specified pleasures or occupations are introduced by infinitives, to hear, to come; but the construction soon changes, as we shall see. The first pleasure is To hear the lark, etc. 41-44. L’Allegro begins his day with early morning. Here we must imagine him as having risen and gone forth where he can see the sky and can look about him to see what is going on in the farm-yard.
[45-46. Then to come, in spite of sorrow,]
And at my window bid good-morrow.
It must be L’Allegro himself who comes to the window, and as he is outside, he comes to look in through the shrubbery and bid good morning to the cottage inmates, who are now up and about their work. The pertinency of the phrase, in spite of sorrow, is not intelligible.
[53. Oft listening how the hounds and horn.] This “pleasure” and the next—sometime walking—are introduced with present participles. There is no interruption of grammatical consistency.
[57. Sometime walking, not unseen.] See the counterpart of this line, [Penseroso 65]. Todd quotes the note of Bishop Hurd,—“Happy men love witnesses of their joy: the splenetic love solitude.”
[59. against], i.e. toward.
[62. The clouds in thousand liveries dight.] Dight is the participle of the verb to dight, meaning to adorn. It is still used as an archaism.
[67. And every shepherd tells his tale.] This undoubtedly means counts the number of his flock. In Shakespeare we find, to tell money, years, steps, a hundred. So tale often means an enumeration, a number. L’Allegro finds the shepherds in the morning counting their sheep, not telling stories.