[292.] loose traces. Because no longer taut from the draught of the plough.
[293.] swinked, overcome with toil, fatigued (A.S. swincan, to toil). Skeat points out that this was once an extremely common word; the sense of toil is due to that of constant movement from the swinging of the labourer’s arms. In Chaucer ‘swinker’ = ploughman.
[294.] mantling, spreading. To mantle is strictly to cloak or cover: comp. Temp. v. 1. 67, “fumes that mantle Their clearer reason.”
[297.] port, bearing, mien.
[298.] faery. This spelling is nearer to that of the M.E. faerie than the current form.
[299.] the element; the air. Since the time of the Greek philosopher Empedocles, fire, earth, air, and water have been popularly called the four elements; when used alone, however, ‘the element’ commonly means ‘the air.’ Comp. Hen. V. iv. 1. 107, “The element shows him as it doth to me”; Par. Lost, ii. 490, “the louring element Scowls o’er the darkened landscape snow or shower,” etc.
[301.] plighted, interwoven or plaited. The verb ‘plight’ (or more properly plite) is a variant of plait: see Il Pens. 57, “her sweetest saddest plight.” The word has no connection with ‘plight,’ l. [372]. awe-strook. Milton uses three forms of the participle, viz. ‘strook,’ ‘struck,’ and ‘strucken.’
[302.] worshiped. The final consonant is now doubled in such verbs before -ed.
[303.] were = would be: subjunctive. like the path to Heaven; i.e. it would be a pleasure to help, etc. There is (probably) no allusion to the Scripture parable of the narrow and difficult way to Heaven (Matt. vii.) as in Son. ix., “labours up the hill of heavenly Truth.”
[304.] help you find: comp. l. [623]. The simple infinitive is here used without to where to would now be inserted. This omission of the preposition now occurs with so few verbs that ‘to’ is often called the sign of the infinitive, but in Early English the only sign of the infinitive was the termination en (e.g. he can speken). The infinitive, being used as a noun, had a dative form called the gerund, which was preceded by the preposition to, and when this became confused with the simple infinitive the use of to became general. Comp. Son. xx. 4, “Help waste a sullen day.”