We might add, and greater strength.


"And flies fled under shade," etc.

Here 'flies' is either a verb or a noun; if the former, we have the grotesque image of the wind running and hiding itself after doing mischief; if the latter, as in the folio, alluding to 'the brize,' we have a bathos unworthy of any poet. Something, then, must have been lost between 'flies' and 'fled.' I read thus:—

"And flies along the sky, while bird and beast are

Fled under shade;"

and I fancy I have made a near approach to what the poet wrote. As he was reading Chaucer at that time, he may have had in his mind:—

"Ne how the beestes and the briddes alle

Fledden for feare when the wood was falle."

Knt's. Tale.