Note 1. The text here followed is that of the Maitland Club reprint (1832) of the last edition (1616) of the poems published during Drummond’s life. [back]
Note 2. Rouse Memnon’s mother: Awaken the dawn from the dark earth and the clouds when she is resting. This is one of that limited class of early myths which may be reasonably interpreted as representations of natural phenomena. Aurora in the old mythology is the mother of Memnon (the east) and wife of Tithonus (the appearances of Earth and Sky during the last hours of Night). She leaves him every morning in renewed youth, to prepare the way for Phœbus (the sun), whilst Tithonus remains in perpetual old age and grayness. (F. T. Palgrave: Golden Treasury.) [back]
Note 4. By Penèus’ streams: Phœbus met his love Daphne, daughter of the river-god, by the river Penèus, in the vale of Tempe. [back]
Note 5. When two thou did to Rome appear: Cf. Livy xxviii. 11 (of the Second Punic War, B.C. 206. “In civitate tanto discrimine belli sollicita … multa prodigia nuntiabantur … et Albæ duos soles visos referebant.” A like phenomenon is mentioned again in xxxix. 14. B.C. 204). Cf. also Pliny, Natural History, II. 31; thus translated by Philemon Holland: “Over and besides, many sunnes are seen at once, neither above nor beneath the bodie of the true sunne indeed, but crosswise and overthwart; never neere, nor directly against the earthe, neither in the night season, but when the sunne either riseth or setteth. Once they are reported to have been seene at noone day in Bosphorus and continued from morne to even.” (This from Aristotle, Meteor., III. 2. 6.) “Three sunnes together our Auncitors in old time have often beheld, as namely when Sp. Posthumius and Q. Mutius, Q. Martius with M. Porcius, M. Antonius with P. Dolabella, and Mar. Lepidus with L. Plancus, were consuls. Yea and we in our daies have seen the like, in the time of Cl. Cæsar of famous memorie, his Consulship, together with Cornelius Orsitus, his colleague. More than three we never to this day find to have been seene together.” Drummond’s reference is perhaps to the famous instance italicized. (A. T. Quiller-Couch, The Golden Pomp.) [back]
Note 6. Purple ports of death: (ports: gates). Drummond elsewhere speaks of lips as “coral ports of bliss,” and the “double port of love.” [back]
Note 7. Night like a drunkard reels: Cf. Romeo and Juliet, act ii. sc. 3:
Note 8. The clouds bespangle with bright gold their blue: Mr. Palgrave in The Golden Treasury for the last three lines follows the variant which reads:
The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue
Here is the pleasant place—
And nothing wanting is, save She, alas!
Mr. Quiller-Couch in The Golden Pomp follows Mr. Palgrave’s example, and expresses his opinion that the ending in the 1616 text “seems comparatively weak.” I note, however, that in his later published Oxford Book of English Verse he restores the original ending of the text as it is printed here. [back]
