1.  Visionary tints:  The term Indian summer is given to almost any autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and hazy weather.  In America these characteristic features of late fall were especially associated with the middle West, at a time when the Indians occupied that region.

5.  Hebe:  Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods at their feasts on Olympus.  Like Hebe, Autumn fills the sloping fields, rimmed round with distant hills, with her own delicious atmosphere of dreamy and poetic influence.

11.  My own projected spirit:  It seems to the poet that his own spirit goes out to the world, steeping it in reverie like his own, rather than receiving the influence from nature’s mood.

25.  Gleaning Ruth:  For the story of Ruth’s gleaning in the fields of Boaz, see the book of Ruth, ii.

38.  Chipmunk:  Lowell at first had “squirrel” here, which would be inconsistent with the “underground fastness.”  And yet, are chipmunks seen up in walnut trees?

40.  This line originally read, “with a chipping bound.” Cheeping is chirping, or giving the peculiar cluck that sounds like “cheep,” or “chip.”

45.  Faint as smoke, etc.:  The farmer burns the stubble and other refuse of the season before his “fall plowing.”

46.  The single crow, etc.:  Note the full significance of this detail of the picture.  Compare Bryant’s Death of the Flowers:

    “And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.”

50.  Compare with this stanza the pretty little poem, The Birch Tree.

68.  Lavish of their long-hid gold:  The chestnut leaves, it will be remembered, turn to a bright golden yellow in autumn.  These descriptions of autumn foliage are all as true as beautiful.

73.  Maple-swamps:  We generally speak of the swamp-maple, which grows in low ground, and has particularly brilliant foliage in autumn.

82.  Tangled blackberry:  This is the creeping blackberry of course, which every one remembers whose feet have been caught in its prickly tangles.

91.  Martyr oak:  The oak is surrounded with the blazing foliage of the ivy, like a burning martyr.

99.  Dear marshes:  The Charles River near Elmwood winds through broad salt marshes, the characteristic features of which Lowell describes with minute and loving fidelity.

127.  Bobolink:  If Lowell had a favorite bird, it was the bobolink, although the oriole was a close competitor for his praises.  In one of his letters he says:  “I think the bobolink the best singer in the world, even undervaluing the lark and the nightingale in the comparison.”  And in another he writes:  “That liquid tinkle of theirs is the true fountain of youth if one can only drink it with the right ears, and I always date the New Year from the day of my first draught.  Messer Roberto di Lincoln, with his summer alb over his shoulders, is the true chorister for the bridals of earth and sky.  There is no bird that seems to me so thoroughly happy as he, so void of all arriere pensee about getting a livelihood.  The robin sings matins and vespers somewhat conscientiously, it seems to me—­makes a business of it and pipes as it were by the yard—­but Bob squanders song like a poet.”