[97] Obtain, save.

[98] Equivalent to “What are those hands of yours for?”

[99] He was but thirty-nine when he died.

[100] To rhyme with pray in the second line.

[101] Bunch of flowers.  He was thinking of Aaron’s rod, perhaps.

[102] To correspond to that of Christ.

[103] Again a touch of holy humour:  to match his Master’s predestination, he will contrive something three years beforehand, with an if.

[104] The here in the preceding line means his book; hence the thy book is antithetical.

[105] Concent is a singing together, or harmoniously.

[106] Music depends all on proportions.

[107] The diapason is the octave.  Therefore “all notes true.”  See note 2, p. 205.

[108] An intransitive verb:  he was wont.

[109] The birds called halcyons were said to build their nests on the water, and, while they were brooding, to keep it calm.

[110] The morning star.

[111] The God of shepherds especially, but the God of all nature—­the All in all, for Pan means the All.

[112] Milton here uses the old Ptolemaic theory of a succession of solid crystal concentric spheres, in which the heavenly bodies were fixed, and which revolving carried these with them.  The lowest or innermost of these spheres was that of the moon.  “The hollow round of Cynthia’s seat” is, therefore, this sphere in which the moon sits.

[113] That cannot be expressed or described.

[114] By hinges he means the axis of the earth, on which it turns as on a hinge.  The origin of hinge is hang.  It is what anything hangs on.

[115] This is an apostrophe to the nine spheres (see former note), which were believed by the ancients to send forth in their revolutions a grand harmony, too loud for mortals to hear.  But no music of the lower region can make up full harmony without the bass of heaven’s organ.  The music of the spheres was to Milton the embodiment of the theory of the universe.  He uses the symbol often.

[116] Consort is the right word scientifically.  It means the fitting together of sounds according to their nature. Concert, however, is not wrong.  It is even more poetic than consort, for it means a striving together, which is the idea of all peace:  the strife is together, and not of one against the other.  All harmony is an ordered, a divine strife.  In the contest of music, every tone restrains its foot and bows its head to the rest in holy dance.

[117] Symphony is here used for chorus, and quite correctly; for symphony is a voicing together.  To this symphony of the angels the spheres and the heavenly organ are the accompaniment.

[118] Die of the music.

[119] Not merely swings, but lashes about.