[188.] grey-hooded Even. Comp. “sandals grey,” Lyc. 187; “civil-suited,” Il Pens. 122; both applied to morning.
[189.] a sad votarist, etc. A votarist is one who is bound by a vow (Lat. votum): the current form is votary, applied in a general sense to one devoted to an object, e.g. a votary of science. In the present case, the votarist is a palmer, i.e. a pilgrim who carried a palm-branch in token of his having been to Palestine. Such would naturally wear sober-coloured or homely garments: comp. Drayton, “a palmer poor in homely russet clad.” In Par. Reg. xiv. 426, Morning is a pilgrim clad in “amice grey.” On weed, see [note], l. 16.
[190.] hindmost wheels: comp. l. [95]: “If this fine image is optically realised, what we see is Evening succeeding Day as the figure of a venerable grey-hooded mendicant might slowly follow the wheels of some rich man’s chariot” (Masson).
[192.] labour ... thoughts, the burden of my thoughts.
[193.] engaged, committed: this use of the word may be compared with that in Hamlet, iii. 3. 69, “Art more engaged” (= bound or entangled). To engage is to bind by a gage or pledge.
[195.] stole, stolen. This use of the past form for the participle is frequent in Elizabethan English. Else, etc. The meaning is: ‘The envious darkness must have stolen my brothers, otherwise why should night hide the light of the stars?’ The clause ‘but for some felonious end’ is therefore to some extent tautological.
[197.] dark lantern. The stars by a far-fetched metaphor are said to be concealed, though not extinguished, just as the light of a dark lantern is shut off by a slide. Comp. More; “Vice is like a dark lanthorn, which turns its bright side only to him that bears it.”
[198.] everlasting oil. Comp. F. Q. i. 1. 57:
“By this the eternal lamps, wherewith high Jove
Doth light the lower world, were half yspent:”
also Macbeth, ii. 1. 5, “There’s husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out.” There is here an irregularity of syntax. “That Nature hung in heaven” is a relative clause co-ordinate in sense with the next clause; but by a change of thought the phrase “and filled their lamps” is treated as a principal clause, and a new object is introduced: comp. l. [6].