[543.] sat me down: see [note], l. 61.
[544.] canopied, and interwove. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 2. 49, ‘I know a bank,’ etc. In sense ‘canopied’ refers to ‘bank,’ and ‘interwove’ to ‘ivy.’ There are two forms of the past participle of weave, viz. wove and woven: see Arc. 47.
[545.] flaunting, showy, garish. In Lyc. 146, the poet first wrote ‘garish columbine,’ then ‘well-attired woodbine.’
[547.] meditate ... minstrelsy, i.e. to sing a pastoral song: comp. Lyc. 32. 66. To meditate the muse is a Virgilian phrase: see Ecl. i. and vi. The Lat. meditor has the meaning of ‘to apply one’s self to,’ and does not mean merely to ponder.
[548.] had, should have: comp. l. [394]. ere a close, i.e. before he had finished his song (Masson). Close occurs in the technical sense of ‘the final cadence of a piece of music.’
[549.] wonted: see [note], l. 332.
[550.] barbarous: comp. Son. xii. 3, “a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuckoos, etc.”
[551.] listened them. The omission of to after verbs of hearing is frequent in Shakespeare and others: comp. “To listen our purpose”; “List a brief tale”; “hearken the end”; etc. (see Abbott, § 199). ‘Them’: this refers to the sounds implied in ‘dissonance.’
[552.] unusual stop. This refers to what happened at l. [145], and the “soft and solemn-breathing sound” to l. [230].
[553.] drowsy frighted, i.e. drowsy and frighted. The noise of Comus’s rout is here supposed to have kept the horses of night awake and in a state of drowsy agitation until the sudden calm put an end to their uneasiness. In Milton’s corrected MS. we read ‘drowsy flighted,’ where the two words are not co-ordinate epithets but must be regarded as expressing one idea = flying drowsily; to express this some insert a hyphen. Comp. ‘dewy-feathered,’ Il Pens. 146, and others of Milton’s remarkable compound adjectives. The reading in the text is that of the printed editions of 1637, ’45, and ’73.