[203.] rife, prevalent. perfect, distinct; see [note], l. 73.
[204.] single darkness, darkness only. Single is from the same base as simple; comp. l. [369].
[205.] What might this be? This is a direct question about a past event, and has the same meaning as “what should it be?” in line [482]: see [note] there. A thousand fantasies, etc. On this, passage Lowell says: “That wonderful passage in Comus of the airy tongues, perhaps the most imaginative in suggestion he ever wrote, was conjured out of a dry sentence in Purchas’s abstract of Marco Polo. Such examples help us to understand the poet.” Reference may also be made to the Anat. of Mel.: “Fear makes our imagination conceive what it list, ... and tyrannizeth over our fantasy more than all other affections, especially in the dark”; also to the song prefixed to the same work, “My phantasie presents a thousand ugly shapes,” etc. On the power of imagination or phantasy, Shakespeare says:
“As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.“—
M. N. D. v. 1. 14.
Compare also Ben Jonson’s Vision of Delight:
“Break, Phant’sie, from thy cave of cloud,
And spread thy purple wings;
Now all thy figures are allow’d,
And various shapes of things:
Create of airy forms a stream ...
And though it be a waking dream,” etc.
[207.] Of calling shapes, etc. In Heywood’s Hierarchy of Angels there is a reference to travellers seeing strange shapes beckoning to them. Such words as ‘shapes,’ ‘shadows,’ ‘airy tongues,’ etc., illustrate Milton’s power to create an indefinite, yet expressive picture. Comp. Aen. iv. 460. beckoning shadows dire. A characteristic arrangement of words in Milton: comp. lines [470], [945].
[208.] syllable, pronounce distinctly.
[210.] may startle well, may well startle.