[968.] so goodly grown, i.e. grown so goodly. Goodly = handsome (A.S. gódlic = goodlike).
[970.] timely. Here an adverb: in l. [689] it is an adjective. Comp. the two phrases in Macbeth: “To gain the timely inn,” iii. 3. 7; and “To call timely on him,” ii. 3. 51.
[972.] assays, trials, temptations. Assay is used by Milton in the sense of ‘attempt’ as well as of ‘trial’: see Arc. 80, “I will assay, her worth to celebrate.” The former meaning is now confined to the form essay (radically the same word); and the use of assay has been still further restricted from its being used chiefly of the testing of metals. Comp. Par. Lost, iv. 932, “hard assays and ill successes”; Par. Reg. i. 264, iv. 478.
[974, 5.] To triumph. The whole purpose of the poem is succinctly expressed in these lines. Stage Direction: Spirit epiloguizes, i.e. sings the epilogue or concluding stanzas. In one of Lawes’ manuscripts of the mask, the epilogue consists of twelve lines only, those numbered [1012-1023]. From the same copy we find that line [976] had been altered by Lawes in such a manner as to convert the first part of the epilogue into a prologue which, in his character as Attendant Spirit, he sang whilst descending upon the stage:—
From the heavens now I fly,
And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad field of the sky.
There I suck the liquid air
All amidst the gardens fair
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree.
There eternal summer dwells,
And west winds, with musky wing,
About the cedarn alleys fling
Nard and cassia’s balmy smells.
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can show,
Yellow, watchet, green, and blue,
And drenches oft with Manna dew
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where many a cherub soft reposes.
Doubtless this was the arrangement in the actual performance of the mask.
[976.] To the ocean, etc. The resemblance of this song, in rhythm and rhyme, to the song of Ariel in the Tempest, v. 1. 88-94, has been frequently pointed out: “Where the bee sucks, there suck I,” etc. Compare also the song of Johphiel in The Fortunate Isles (Ben Jonson): “Like a lightning from the sky,” etc. The epilogue as sung by Lawes (ll. [1012-1023]) may also be compared with the epilogue of the Tempest: “Now my charms are all o’erthrown,” etc.
[977.] happy climes. Comp. Odyssey, iv. 566: “The deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world’s end ... where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain; but always ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill west to blow cool on men”: see also l. [14]. ‘Clime,’ radically the same as climate, is still used in its literal sense = a region of the earth; while ‘climate’ has the secondary meaning of ‘atmospheric conditions.’ Comp. Son. viii. 8: “Whatever clime the sun’s bright circle warms.”
[978.] day ... eye. Comp. Son. i. 5: “the eye of day”; and Lyc. 26: “the opening eyelids of the Morn.”
[979.] broad fields of the sky. Comp. Virgil’s “Aëris in campis latis,” Aen. vi. 888.