Poem 40.
By its style this beautiful example of old simplicity and feeling may be referred to the early years of Elizabeth. Late forgot: lately.
Poem 41.
haggards: the least tameable hawks.
Poem 44.
cypres or cyprus,—used by the old writers for crape: whether from the French crespe or from the Island whence it was imported. Its accidental similarity in spelling to cypress has, here and in Milton's Penseroso, probably confused readers.
Poems 46, 47.
"I never saw anything like this funeral dirge," says Charles Lamb, "except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself into the element which it contemplates."
Poem 51.
crystal: fairness.