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98. THE SYLVAN SCENE: Eliot*: “Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.” See John Milton, Paradise Lost 137-142 (1667), where Satan is describing Eden:
“...and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woodie
Theatre Of stateliest view.”
Compare the “sylvan landscape” of Frazer** and Turner’s Golden Bough**.
99. THE CHANGE OF PHILOMEL: Eliot*: “V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.” This is a rape and revenge tale from Ovid*, Metamorphoses 6.635-1053. Procne, far from home, had longed for a visit from her sister Philomela, so the girls’ father let Philomela sail home with Procne’s husband Tereus:
“Now Philomela, scarce receiv'd on board,
And in the royal gilded bark secur'd,
Beheld the dashes of the bending oar,
The ruffled sea, and the receding shore;
When strait (his joy impatient of disguise)
We've gain'd our point, the rough Barbarian cries;
Now I possess the dear, the blissful hour,
And ev'ry wish subjected to my pow'r.
Then, before bringing her home,
the false tyrant seiz'd the princely maid,
And to a lodge in distant woods convey'd;...”
and there with “rude haste” he raped her. She cried out to her sister and father in vain but then promised:
“...Tho' I'm prison'd in this lonely den,
Obscur'd, and bury'd from the sight of men,
My mournful voice the pitying rocks shall move,
And my complainings echo thro' the grove...”
This provoked the king to cut off her tongue, but she still later told her sister what had happened by weaving the episode into a wall tapestry (compare note 8 and lines 97 and 104-110); she fulfilled her promise further by filling the forest air with a song of her story after they were all changed into birds, Philomela and Procne into a nightingale and a swallow (sometimes interpreted vice versa), Tereus into a hoopoe.
103: THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG: Eliot*: “Cf. Part III, l. 204.” This refers us forward to the nightingale at lines 203-206. See also note 198, where nightbirds are likened to prostitutes. For the song itself, see John Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe (1584):
“Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,’ she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.”
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*see note 0.1 **see note 0.2
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