[21.] The feather'd king. Cf. Shakes. Phoenix and Turtle:
| "Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, feather'd king." |
[23.] Dark clouds. The first reading of MS. was "black clouds."
[24.] The terror. This is the reading of the first ed. and also of that of 1768. Most of the modern eds. have "terrors."
[25.] "Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body" (Gray).
[26.] Temper'd. Modulated, "set." Cf. Lycidas, 33: "Tempered to the oaten flute;" Fletcher, Purple Island: "Tempering their sweetest notes unto thy lay," etc.
[27.] O'er Idalia's velvet-green. Idalia appears to be used for Idalium, which was a town in Cyprus, and a favourite seat of Venus, who was sometimes called Idalia. Pope likewise uses Idalia for the place, in his First Pastoral, 65: "Celestial Venus haunts Idalia's groves."
Dr. Johnson finds fault with velvet-green, apparently supposing it to be a compound of Gray's own making. But Young had used it in his Love of Fame: "She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet-green." It is also among the expressions of Pope which are ridiculed in the Alexandriad.