[305.] readiest way. Here ‘readiest’ logically belongs to the predicate.
[311.] each ... every: see [note], l. 19. alley, a walk or avenue.
[312.] Dingle ... bushy dell ... bosky bourn. ‘Dingle’ = dimble (see Ben Jonson’s Sad Shepherd) = dimple = a little dip or depression; hence a narrow valley. ‘Dell’ = dale, literally a cleft; hence a valley, not so deep as a dingle. ‘Bosky bourn,’ a stream whose banks are bushy or thickly grown with bushes. ‘Bourn,’ a boundary, is a distinct word etymologically, but the phrase “from side to side,” as used by Comus, might well imply that the valley as well as the stream is here referred to. ‘Bosky,’ bushy. The noun ‘boscage’ = jungle or bush (M.E. busch, bush, bush). ‘See Tennyson’s Dream of F. W. 243, “the sombre boscage of the wood.”
[315.] stray attendance = strayed attendants; abstract for concrete, as in line [274]. Comp. Par. Lost, x. 80, “Attendance none shall need, nor train”; xii. 132, “Of herds, and flocks, and numerous servitude” (= servants).
[316.] shroud, etc. Milton first wrote “within these shroudie limits”: see [note], l. 147.
[317.] low-roosted lark, i.e. the lark that has roosted on the ground. This is certainly Milton’s meaning, as he refers to the bird as rising from its “thatched pallet” = its nest, which is built on the ground. ‘Roost’ has, however, no radical connection with rest, but denotes a perch for fowls, and Keightley’s remark that Milton is guilty of supposing the lark to sleep, like a hen, upon a perch or roost, may therefore be noticed. But the poets’ meaning is obvious. Prof. Masson takes ‘thatched’ as referring to the texture of the nest or to the corn-stalks or rushes over it.
[318.] rouse. Here used intransitively = awake.
[322.] honest-offered: see notes, ll. [36], [228].
[323.] sooner, more readily.
[324.] tapestry halls. Halls hung with tapestry, tapestry being “a kind of carpet work, with wrought figures, especially used for decorating walls.” The word is said to be from the Persian.