| "What gain you by forbidding it to tease ye? It now can neither trouble you nor please ye." |
[19.] Gray quotes Dryden, Fable on Pythag. Syst.: "And bees their honey redolent of spring."
[21.] Say, father Thames, etc. This invocation is taken from Green's Grotto:
| "Say, father Thames, whose gentle pace Gives leave to view, what beauties grace Your flowery banks, if you have seen." |
Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, st. 232: "Old father Thames raised up his reverend head."
Dr. Johnson, in his hypercritical comments on this Ode, says: "His supplication to Father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself." To which Mitford replies by asking, "Are we by this rule to judge the following passage in the twentieth chapter of Rasselas? 'As they were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes on the river that flowed before her: "Answer," said she, "great Father of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invocation of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me, if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint."'"
[23.] Margent green. Cf. Comus, 232: "By slow Mæander's margent green."
[24.] Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 233: "To Virtue, in the paths of Pleasure, trod."
[26.] Thy glassy wave. Cf. Comus, 861: "Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave."