[110.] saws, sayings, maxims. Saw, say, and saga (a Norwegian legend) are cognate.
[111.] of purer fire, i.e. having a higher or diviner nature. (Or, as there is really no question of degree, we may render the phrase as = divine.) Compare the Platonic doctrine that each element had living creatures belonging to it, those of fire being the gods; similarly the Stoics held that whatever consisted of pure fire was divine, e.g. the stars: hence the additional significance of line [112].
[112.] the starry quire: an allusion to the music of the spheres; see lines [3], [1021]. Pythagoras supposed that the planets emitted sounds proportional to their distances from the earth and formed a celestial concert too melodious to affect the “gross unpurgèd ear” of mankind: comp. l. [458] and Arc. 63-73. Shakespeare (M. of V. v. 1. 61) alludes to the music of the spheres:
“There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins,” etc.
Quire is a form of choir (Lat. chorus, a band of singers); in Greek tragedy the chorus was supposed to represent the sentiments of the audience. Quire (of paper) is a totally different word, probably derived from Lat. quatuor, four.
[113.] nightly watchful spheres. Milton elsewhere alludes to the stars keeping watch: “And all the spangled host keep watch in order bright,” Hymn Nat. 21. ‘Nightly,’ used as an adjective in the sense of ‘nocturnal’: comp. Il Pens. 84, “To bless the doors from nightly harm”; Arc. 48, “nightly ill”; and Wordsworth’s line: “The nightly hunter lifting up his eyes.” Its ordinary sense is “night by night.”
[114.] Lead in swift round. Comp. Arc. 71: “And the low world in measured motion draw, After the heavenly tune.”
[115.] sounds, straits: A.S. sund, a strait of the sea, so called because it could be swum across. See Skeat, Etym. Dict. s.v.
[116.] to the moon, i.e. as affected by the moon. For similar uses of ‘to,’ comp. Lyc. 33, “tempered to the oaten flute”; Lyc. 44, “fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.” morrice. The waters quiver in the moonlight as if dancing. The morrice = a morris or Moorish dance, brought into Spain by the Moors, and thence introduced into England by John of Gaunt. We read also of a “morris-pike”—a weapon used by the Moors in Spain.
[117.] shelves, flat ledges of rock.