[34. Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel.] The Satyrs, represented as having human forms, with small goat’s horns and a small tail, had for their occupation to play on the flute for their master, Bacchus, or to pour his wine. The Fauns were sylvan deities, attendants of Pan, and are represented, like their master, with the ears, horns, and legs of a goat.
[37-49.] Nature herself sympathizes with men, and mourns thy loss.
[50. Nymphs:] deities of the forests and streams.
[52. on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie.] The shipwreck in which King was lost took place off the coast of Wales. Any one of the Welsh mountains will serve to make good this allusion.
[54. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high.] Mona is the ancient and poetical name of the island of Anglesea.
[55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.] The Dee (Deva) below Chester expands into a broad estuary. In his lines spoken At a Vacation Exercise, Milton, characterizing many rivers, mentions the “ancient hallowed Dee.” The country about the Dee had been specially famous as the seat of the old Druidical religion. In the eleventh Song of his Polyolbion, Drayton eulogizes the medicinal virtues of the salt springs in the valley of the river Weever, which attract Thetis and the Nereids:—
And Amphitrite oft this Wizard River led
Into her secret walks (the depths profound and dread)
Of him (supposed so wise) the hid events to know
Of things that were to come, as things done long ago.