arried into the Maeander and, after being
thrown on land, dedicated to Apollo, the god of song. Comp. _Lyc._
58-63, where the Muses and misfortune are similarly associated by a
reference to Orpheus, whose 'gory visage' and lyre were carried "down
the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore." Further, the Maeander is
associated with the sorrows of the maiden Byblis, who seeks her lost
brother Caunus (called by Ovid _Maeandrius juvenis_). [Since the above
was written, Prof. J. W. Hales has given the following explanation of
Milton's allusion: "The real reason is that the Meander was a famous
haunt of swans, and the swan was a favourite bird with the Greek and
Latin writers--one to whose sweet singing they perpetually allude"
(_Athenaeum_, April 20, 1889).] 'Margent.' _Marge_ and _margin_ are
forms of the same word.

233. ~the violet-embroidered vale~. The notion that flowers _broider_ or
ornament the ground is common in poetry: comp. _Par. Lost_, iv. 700:
"Under foot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
_Broidered_ the ground." In _Lyc._ 148, the flowers themselves wear
'embroidery.' The nightingale is made to haunt a violet-embroidered vale
because these flowers are associated with love (see Jonson's _Masque of
Hymen_) and with innocence (see _Hamlet_, iv. 5. 158: "I would give you
some violets, but they withered all when my father died"). Prof. Hales,
however, thinks that some particular vale is here alluded to, and
argues, with much acumen, that the poet referred to the woodlands close
by Athens to the north-west, through which the Cephissus flowed, and
where stood the birthplace of Sophocles, who sings of his native Colonus
as frequented by nightingales. The same critic regards the epithet
'violet-embroidered' as a translation of the Greek +iostephanos+ (=
crowned with violets), frequently applied by Aristophanes to Athens, of
which Colonus was a suburb. Macaulay also refers to Athens as "the
violet-crowned city." It is, at least, very probable that Milton might
here associate the nightingale with Colonus, as he does in _Par. Reg._
iv. 245: see the following note.

234. ~love-lorn nightingale~, the nightingale whose loved ones are lost:
comp. Virgil, _Georg._ iv. 511: "As the nightingale wailing in the
poplar shade plains for her lost young, ... while she weeps the night
through, and sitting on a bough, reproduces her piteous melody, and
fills the country round with the plaints of her sorrow." _Lorn_ and
_los