<46.1> i.e. Anne, Lady Lovelace, the poet's kinswoman, who seems to have assisted him in some emergency, unknown to us except through the present lines.
<46.2> Caractacus(?).
<46.3> The mythology of Greece assigned to each wind a separate cave, in which it was supposed to await the commands of its sovereign Aeolus, or Aeolos. It is to this myth that Lovelace alludes.
<46.4> A very common form of VILE among early writers.
<46.5> This reads like a parody on the fourth Eclogue of Virgil. The early English poets were rather partial to the introduction of miniature-pictures of the Golden Age on similar occasions to the present. Thus Carew, in his poem TO SAXHAM, says:—
"The Pheasant, Partridge, and the Lark
Flew to thy house, as to the Ark.
The willing Oxe of himself came
Home to the slaughter with the Lamb.
And every beast did thither bring
Himself, to be an offering."
Carew's POEMS, 1651, p. 34.
<46.6> Vice.
<46.7> We should read THEMSELVES.
A LADY WITH A FALCON ON HER FIST. TO THE HONOURABLE MY COUSIN A[NNE] L[OVELACE.]
I.
This Queen of Prey (now prey to you),
Fast to that pirch of ivory
In silver chaines and silken clue,
Hath now made full thy victory: