ve, and
'upon' a preposition: the only objection to this reading is that the
notion of crowning the head upon the banks is peculiar. The difficulty
vanishes when we recollect that Milton frequently connects two clauses
with one subject rather loosely: the subject of the second clause is
'thou,' implied in 'thy lofty head.' An exact parallel to this is found
in _L'Alleg._ 121, 122: 'whose bright eyes rain influence and _judge_
the prize'; also in _Il Pens._ 155-7; 'let my due feet never fail to
_walk ... and love_, etc.': also in _Lyc._ 88, 89. The explanation
adopted by Prof. Masson is that Milton had in view two Greek
verbs--+peristephanoo+, 'to put a crown round,' and +epistephanoo+, "to
put a crown upon": thus, "May thy lofty head be _crowned round_ with
many a tower and terrace, and thy banks here and there be _crowned upon_
with groves of myrrh and cinnamon." This makes 'banks' nominative, and
'upon' an adverb.

In the Bridgewater MS. the stage direction here is, _Song ends_.

942. ~Not a waste~, etc., _i.e._ 'Let there not be a superfluous or
unnecessary sound until we come.' 'waste' is an attributive: see note,
l. 728.

945. ~gloomy covert wide~: see note, l. 207.

946. ~not many furlongs~. These words are deliberately inserted to keep up
the illusion. It is probable that, in the actual representation of the
mask, the scene representing the enchanted palace was removed when
Comus's rout was driven off the stage, and a woodland scene redisplayed.
This would give additional significance to these lines and to the change
of scene after l. 957. 'Furlong' = furrow-long: it thus came to mean the
length of a field, and is now a measure of length.

949. ~many a friend~. 'Many a' is a peculiar idiom, which has been
explained in different ways. One view is that 'many' is a corruption of
the French _mesnie_, a train or company, and 'a' a corruption of the
preposition 'of,' the singular noun being then substituted for the
plural through confusion of the preposition with the article. A more
correct view seems to be that 'many' is the A.S. _manig_, which was in
old English used with a singular noun and without the article, _e.g._
_manig mann_ = many men. In the thirteenth century the indefinite
article began to be inserted; thus _mony enne thing_ = many a thing,
just as we say 'what _a_ thing,' 'such _a_ thing.' This would seem to
show that 'a' is not a corruption of 'of,' and that there is no
connection with the French w