line 3. steepy linn.  Steepy is Elizabethan = steep, precipitous.  Linn (Gael. linne = pool; A.S. hlinna = brook) is variously used for ‘pool under a waterfall,’ ‘cascade,’ ‘precipice,’ and ‘ravine.’  The reference here is to the ravine close by Ashestiel, mentioned in Lockhart’s description of the surroundings:—­’On one side, close under the windows, is a deep ravine clothed with venerable trees, down which a mountain rivulet is heard, more than seen, in its progress to the Tweed.’

line 16. our forest hills.  Selkirkshire is poetically called ‘Ettrick Forest’; hence the description of the soldiers from that district killed at Flodden as ‘the flowers of the forest.’

line 22.  Cp.  Hamilton of Bangour’s allusion (Ode iii. 43) to the appearance of winter on these heights;—­

     ’Cast up thy eyes, how bleak and bare
      He wanders on the tops of Yare!’

line 37. imps (Gr. emphutos, Swed. ympa).  See ‘Faery Queene,’ Book I. (Clarendon Press), note to Introd.  The word means (1) a graft; (2) a scion of a noble house; (3) a little demon; (4) a mischievous child.  The context implies that the last is the sense in which the word is used here.  Cp.  Beattie’s ‘Minstrel,’ i. 17:—­

     ’Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
      Of squabbling imps,’

line 50. round.  Strictly speaking, a round is a circular dance in which the performers hold each other by the hands.  The term, however, is fairly applicable to the frolicsome gambols of a group of lambs in a spring meadow.  Certain rounds became famous enough to be individualised, as e.g.  Sellenger’s or St. Leger’s round, mentioned in the May-day song, ‘Come Lasses and Lads.’  Cp.  Macbeth, iv. 1; Midsummer Night’s Dream, ii. 2; and see note on Comus, line 144, in ‘English Poems of Milton,’ vol. i. (Clarendon Press).

line 53.  Lockhart, in a foot-note to his edition of ‘Marmion,’ quotes from the ‘Monthly Review’ of May, 1808:  ’The “chance and change” of nature—­the vicissitudes which are observable in the moral as well as the physical part of the creation—­have given occasion to more exquisite poetry than any other general subject....  The Ai, ai, tai Malaki of Moschus is worked up again to some advantage in the following passage—­ “To mute,” &c.’

lines 61, 62.  The inversion of reference in these lines is an illustration of the rhetorical figure ‘chiasmus.’  Cp. the arrangement of the demonstrative pronouns in these sentences from ’Kenilworth’:—­’Your eyes contradict your tongue.  That speaks of a protector, willing and able to watch over you; but these tell me you are ruined.’

line 64.  Cp. closing lines of Wordsworth’s ’Ode on Intimations of Immortality’ (finished in 1806):—­

     ’To me the meanest flower that blows can give
      Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’

lines 65-8.  Nelson fell at Trafalgar, Oct. 21, 1805; Pitt died Jan. 23, 1806.