means "before the planet Venus had sunk into the sea."
In Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, under the word Aphrodite or Venus, we find that—
"Some traditions stated that she had sprung from the foam (ἀφρός) of the sea which had gathered around the mutilated parts of Uranus, that had been thrown into the sea by Kronos, after he had unmanned his father."—Hesiod. Theog. 190.
The allusion in the first stanza of In Memoriam is, I think, to Shelley. The doctrine referred to is common to him and many other poets; but he perhaps inculcates it more frequently than any other. (See Queen Mab sub finem. Revolt of Islam, canto xii. st. 17. Adonais, stanzas 39. 41. et passim.) Besides this, the phrase "clear harp" seems peculiarly applicable to Shelley, who is remarkable for the simplicity of his language.
X. Z.
Tennyson's In Memoriam.—The word star applies in poetry to all the heavenly bodies; and therefore, to the crescent moon, which is often near enough to the sun to be within or to be encircled by, the crimson colour of the sky about sunset; and the sun may, figuratively, be called father of the moon, because he dispenses to her all the light with which she shines; and, moreover, because new, or waxing moons, must set nearly in the same point of the horizon as the sun; and because that point of the horizon in which a heavenly body sets, may, figuratively, be called its grave; therefore, I believe the last two lines of the stanza of the poem numbered lxxxvii., or 87, in Tennyson's In Memoriam, quoted by W. B. H., to mean simply—
We returned home between the hour of sunset and the setting of the moon, then not so much as a week old.
Robert Snow.
Bishop Hooper's Godly Confession, &c. (Vol. iii., p. 169.).—The Rev. Charles Nevinson may be informed that there are two copies of the edition of the above work for which he inquires, in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.
Tyro.