[115. climb into the fold.] See John X 1. The metaphor of sheep and herdsmen is continued throughout the speech.
[119. Blind mouths!] As the relative pronoun beginning the next clause refers to this exclamation, mouths must be taken as a bold metaphor meaning men who are all mouth, or are supremely greedy and selfish. Moreover, they are blind.
[122. What recks it them?] See note on [Comus 404]. They are sped: they have succeeded in their purpose. See Antony and Cleopatra II 3 35. Note also the phrase of greeting, bid God speed, as in 2 John I 10, 11, King James version.
[123. their lean and flashy songs:] their sermons.
Evidently Milton can cull words of extreme disparagement and vilification as well as words of unapproachable poetic beauty.
[125-127.] The congregations are not edified. The miserable preaching they listen to fails to keep them sound in doctrine. They grow lax in their faith, and heretical opinions become fashionable.
[128. the grim wolf with privy paw] is undoubtedly the Roman church.
[130-131.] These lines evidently denounce some terrible retribution that is sure ere long to overtake the corrupt clergy described in the preceding passage. The two-handed engine at the door, that stands ready to smite once and smite no more, has never been definitely explained. We naturally think of the headsman’s axe, which, however, does not become applicable till the execution of Archbishop Laud, an event not to take place till eight years after the composition of the poem. It has been suggested that Milton had in mind the two houses of Parliament, or the Parliament and the Army, as the agency through which reform was to be effected. We must remember that Milton in 1637 could not foresee the Civil War. He may have meant to combine certain scriptural expressions into a mysteriously suggestive and oracular prediction, without having in view any single and definite possibility.
[132. Return, Alphēus.] The Alpheus was a river of the Peloponnesus, said to sink underground and to flow beneath the sea to Ortygia, near Syracuse, where it attempted to mingle its waters with those of the fountain Arethusa. See [note on lines 85, 86]. See also Shelley’s poem, Arethusa.
The pastoral tone of lightness and simplicity could not be maintained while St. Peter spoke. But now the Sicilian Muse returns, all the more lovely for the contrast with the stern malediction that has gone before.