[135.] The monumental oak is so called from its great age and size.
[140.] Consciously nursing his melancholy, Il Penseroso deems the wood that hides him a sacred place, and resents intrusion as a profanation.
[141. Hide me from day’s garish eye.] See Richard III. IV 4 89, Romeo and Juliet III 2 25.
[142. While the bee with honeyed thigh.] Is this good apiology?
[146. Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep.] Note that sleep is represented as having feathers. These feathers, in their soft, gentle movement and in their refreshing effect are likened to dew. The figure is a common one with the poets. In Par. Lost IX 1044, Milton has,—“till dewy sleep oppressed them.” Cowper, Iliad II, 41, has,—“Awaking from thy dewy slumbers.”
[148. his] refers to the dewy-feathered sleep. Il Penseroso asks that a strange, mysterious dream, hovering close by the wings of sleep, and lightly pictured in a succession of vivid forms, may be laid on his eye-lids.
[155-166.] The word studious in line 156 determines that the passage refers to college life and not to church attendance. The old English colleges have their cloisters, and these have much the same architectural features as do churches.
[157. embowed] means vaulted, or bent like a bow.
[158. massy-proof:] massive and proof against all failure to support their load.
[159. And storied windows richly dight.] Compare [L’Allegro, 62].