Leave we the common crofts._ As the procession starts up the hill
they leave behind them the small farms and little villages of the plain.

8. _Rock-row._ Day is just breaking over the rocky summits of the
mountains.

9. _There, man's thought._ The smoking crater of a volcano, described as
a censer from which rise the fumes of incense, portends an outbreak of
subterranean fire. The speaker fancifully considers this an appropriate
spot in which to bury the scholar whose passionate eagerness of thought
chafed continually against the bounds of custom and ignorance and human
weakness.

14. _Sepulture._ Pronounced here, _sepulture_. A burial place or tomb.

25. _Step to a tune._ Here and in various other places, as lines 41, 73,
76, etc., are directions to the pallbearers.

34. _Lyric Apollo._ The god Apollo was the ideal of manly beauty. The
Grammarian was, it seems, endowed with rare charm of face and form.

35. _Long he lived nameless._ Youth had passed before the Grammarian
really entered upon his quest for knowledge. But he did not despair. His
vanishing of youth was but a signal to "leave play for work."

45. _Grappled with the world._ The world of knowledge, especially
ancient learning, which was recovered slowly and with difficulty.

49. _Theirs._ He wishes to study the "shaping" or writings of poets and
sages.

50. _Gowned._ Put on the scholastic gown.

64. _Queasy._ Sick at the stomach. He could not get knowledge enough to
make him feel a distaste for it.

65-68. "It" in l. 66 refers to l. 67. The "it" in l. 68 refers to "such
a life," l. 65.

70. _Fancy the fabric._ Under the figure of making a complete plan
before beginning to build a house, he describes the Grammarian's purpose
to know the whole scheme of life before he lived out any part of it.

86. _Calculus_ and _tussis_ (l. 88) are diseases, the stone and
bronchitis, that attacked him.

95. _Soul-hydroptic._ "Hydroptic" is a rare word for "thirsty."

103. _God's task_, etc. He neglected the body, magnified the mind, and
believed that the full realization of his aspirations would come in "the
heavenly period."

113. _That low man_. This comparison between the "low man" and the "high
man" could be effectively illustrated from "Andrea del Sarto." Andrea is
the "low man" who with his skillful hand "goes on adding one to one"
till he attains his "hundred," or excellence of technique. But the other
painters, the ones with the "truer light of God