Max   Hughes suggests that "'Max' commonly derives from the Latin 'Maximus' [greatest]" and argues that Max "represents all the Macs (sons of) . . ." (p. 6). Mathews notes that "Maxwell is an old Scottish name, deriving from a pool" (p. 54). In the Introduction, p. xliii, the possibility is raised that Max (associated by rhyme, of course, with axe) is named from the solar mythologist F. Max Müller.

grav'd   Engraved. Cf. the description of the engraved "golden heart" in "My Irish Love", Old Spookses' Pass, p. 220.

large lilies   The (Madonna) lily is a traditional attribute of the Virgin Mary. In Crawford's work, the (water) lily is repeatedly given a sexual dimension; see "The Lily Bed", Collected Poems, pp. 169-170 and, as discussed in the Introduction, pp. xviii-xxi, the lily song of Malcolm's Katie, III, 175-197. For commentary on these and other tioral poems, see Ann Yeoman, "Towards a Native Mythology," Canadian Literature, 52 (Summer, 1972), pp. 39-47, John Ower, "Crawford and the Penetrating Weapon," The Crawford Symposium, ed. Frank M. Tiemey, Reappraisals: Canadian Writers (1979), pp. 34-38 and Catherine Ross, "Isabella Valancy Crawford and 'this clanging world'," Kawartha Heritage: Proceedings of the Kawartha Conference, 1981, ed. A.O.C. Cole and Jean Murray Cole (1981), pp 122-125. Like the rose, the lily is a favourite flower of Tennyson's; cf. The Gardener's Daughter, 40-42: ". . . A league of grass, washed by a slow broad stream, / That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar, / Waves all its lazy lilies . . ." and Maud, I, xii, iii (422-423): "Maud is here, here, here / In among the lilies" and I, xxii, ix (902, 905): "Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls . . . Queen lily and rose in one". See also D.G. Rossetti, "A Last Confession," 224-226 "I could see / Beneath the growing throat the breasts half'-globed / Like folded lilies deepset in the stream."

small . . .  face   Cf. Tennyson, The Gardener's Daughter, 12-13, where Juliet anticipates "little Katie" in being "A miniature of loveliness, all grace / Summed up and closed in little. . . ."

A seed of love to cleave into a rock   Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, VI, 18-19: "The little seed they laughed at in the dark / Has risen and cleft the soil. . . ."

bourgeon   Burgeon: to sprout; to put forth buds.

sixteen-summer'd heart   Cf. Tennyson, Enoch Arden, 37, 57: ". . . when the dawn of rosy childhood past . . . he touched his one-and-twentieth May. . . ."

perfect rose   Tennyson, In Memoriam, [Epilogue], 25-28, 33-36:

But where is she, the bridal flower
  That must be made a wife ere noon?
  She enters, glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower.

                  *     *     *

O when her life was yet in bud,
  He too foretold the perfect rose.
  For thee she grew, for thee she grows
For ever, and as fair as good.

Although Tennyson lies centrally in the background of Crawford's depiction of her heroine as a rose (and lily), Dante (see especially the "snow white rose" [Henry Francis Cary's translation] in Paradiso, XXXI, 1) may also lie behind the figure of Katie as "the perfect rose".

Katie, blushing   Cf. Tennyson, "The Brook." 214:       ". . . Katie laughed, and laughing blushed. . . ."

See the Introduction, pp. xx-xxii for Ruskin's "Of Queens' Gardens," in Sesame and Lilies as a context for the idea of Katie as a "queen" in a "garden". See also Tennyson, Maud, I, XXII, ix (902): "Queen rose of the rosebud garden. . . ."

shriek like mandrakes   Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, IV, iii, 47-48: "shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, / That living mortals hearing them run mad."

quaint old books   Cf. D.G. Rossetti, "A Last Confession," 150-15 1: "What I knew I told / Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales."

crescent-wise   Cf. Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, iii, 11-14:  ". . . Nature crescent does not grow alone / In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes / The inward service of the mind and soul / Grows wide withal" and Antony and Cleopatra, II, i, 10-11: "My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope / Says it will come to the full." Crescent: growing or developing, frequently with some reference to the increasing of the new moon. For further echoes of the Shakespeare passages just quoted, see I, 109 and II, 172-173 and 240, VI, 3 and VI, 32.

When Henry VIII of England met Francis I of France in 1520 the magnificence of the display by both kings eamed for the scene the title of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

This passage contains several Biblical allusions and resonances: Leviathan is the whale-like sea monster of enormous size described in Job 41; the Red Sea is crossed by the Israelites during their escape from Egypt in Exodus 14; the golden calf is the idolatrous figure made by Aaron in Exodus 32. In Greek mythology, the golden fleece was the object of a successful quest by Jason and the Argonauts.

In Mohammedan myth, Genii (Jinn) are supernatural creatures who possess angelic or demonic qualities.

Reuben   Mathews, p. 54 notes that "Reuben is the eldest son of Jacob and Leah and a founder of one of the twelve tribes of Israel." See Genesis 29.32, 30.14, 35, 37, 42 and 49, and also Introduction, pp. xli-xlii.

stalwart   Brave; strong; large and powerful in frame.

grey of life   Cf. Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, iii, 22-23: "My way of life / Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf. . . ."

serfs   Those who in the Middle Ages (and until 1861 in Russia) were attached to an estate and transferred with it, and liable to the most menial work in the service of their feudal lords. Cf. "The Helot," Old Spookses' Pass, pp. 20-39.

gyves   Shackles, especially for the legs; fetters, leg-irons. Cf. the "steely gyves' of Tennyson, The Lover's Tale, II, 155.

Star or Garter   Among the higher orders of knighthood in Great Britain are the order of the Garter and the Star of India.

the battle done and won   Cf. Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, i, 3-4: "When the hurly-burly's done, / When the battle's lost and won."

smoking seas of blood   Cf. Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI, II, iii, 20- 21: steeds / . . . stained their fetlocks in his smoking blood. . . ." Cf. "War" and "The Sword," Old Spookses' Pass, pp. 184-189.

Cf. "Wealth," Collected Poems, pp. 85-86.

Kine   Cattle.

hand in hand   See Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 689 and XII, 648 where Adam and Eve are described before and after the fall as walking "hand in hand".

hale   Healthy, robust.

thew'd   See Introduction, p. xli and the quotation from Hamlet at I, 48,above.

For these and the surrounding lines, see Tennyson, Enoch Arden, 145-147: "With fuller profits lead an easier life, / Have all his pretty young ones educated, / And pass his days in peace among his own" and Avlmer's Field, 21-24: "[Sir Aylmer's eyes] Saw from his windows nothing save his own— / What lovelier of his own had he than her, / His only child, his Edith, whom he loved / As heiress and not heir regretfully." Whereas Malcolm Graem merely has "'a voice in Council and in Church'" (I, 67), Sir Aylmer is an "almighty man," a "country God" (13-14).

two arms indifferent strong   Cf. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, I, v, 262-265: ". . . I [Olivia] will give out divers schedules of my beauty. I shall  be inventoried . . . as, item, two lips, indifferent red. . . ."

Cf. Tennyson, Aylmer's Field, 419f.: "He [Leolin], passionately hopefuller, would go, / Labour for his own Edith, and return / In such a sunlight of prosperity / He should not be rejected."

striding o'er his fields   Cf. (with the "heir" of I, 112) Tennyson, In Memoriam, XC, 15: "The hard heir strides about their lands. . . ."

returns his chiding tones   Cf. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 53-54: "And with an accent tuned in selfsame key / Retorts to chiding Fortune."

Thoroughly Tennysonian in mood and imagery, this choric lyric recalls "Crossing the Bar" (with its boat, sunset "evening star" and "bar") and "0 Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South , one of the best-known of the interspersed lyrics in The Princess. Written in tercets (but of unrhymed iambic pentameter), "0 Swallow, Swallow contains references to the North and South      (". . . the sun of summer in the North, / And the brief moon of beauty in the South", [The Princess, IV, 94- 95]) which find echoes in the treatment of the seasons in the Amerindian sections of Malcolm's Katie. The triple rhymes (aaa) of Crawford's tercets may have a trinitarian significance which, like the "jewell'd skies" of her lyric's concluding line, anticipates the "great daffodil" of Part II, 184-190. The tight structure of Crawford's tercets may also reflect the constructive dimension of Love in the poem.

gleams   A resonantly Tennysonian word.

Eve's rosy bar   The first explicit reference to the myth of Eden (in Genesis 2 and Paradise Lost) that helps to shape Malcolm's Katie.

throbs her darling star      Cf. What Rick's calls Tennyson's portrait of a "fierce feminist" (Ricks, p. 456), "Kate," 9: "Her heart is like a throbbing star" and John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes," 3 17-319: ". . . he arose, / Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star / Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose. . . ." See also "True and False," Collected Poems, p. 88: "With stars above and stars below, / The lovely eve was fair as noon. . . ." The "darling star" of "Eve" (see the note to 1, 140, above) and of the evening may be Venus or Hesperus in its traditional association with love.

South Wind   The South Wind (identified with and as Shawonda'see) figures in Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha and in "The Vocabulary to the Song of Hiawatha" (hereafter "Vocabulary"). In "The Four Winds" section of Hiawatha (II) Shawonda'see is described as a "fat," "lazy," "Listless," "careless" and "deluded" dweller "In the never-ending Summer" who smokes a "pipe" (calumet?) and brings ". . . the tender Indian Summer / To the melancholy North-land, / In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes." He loves "the maiden of the prairie" ("the prairie dandelion"), who is stolen from him by the North-wind. See also "The Wooing of Gheezis [the Sun]," Old Spookses' Pass, pp. 102-103.

gay calumet   In his note "On the mountains of the Prairie" (Poetical Works, p. 617), Longfellow quotes an "account of the Coteau des Prairies" by George Catlin which includes the following: "And here, also, the peace-breathing calamet was born, and fringed with the eagle's quills, which has shed its thrilling fumes over the land, and soothed the fury of the relentless savage. The Great Spirit at an ancient period here called the Indian nations together . . . and made a huge pipe by turning it in his hand, which he smoked over them, and to the North, the South, the East, and the West, and told them that this stone was red—that it was their flesh—that they must use it for their pipes of peace See also Hiawatha, I ("The Peace-Pipe"), where the word "calumet" is spelled as Crawford spells it.

useless wampum   In his "Vocabulary" Longfellow accurately defines "Wam'pum" as "beads of shell". Wampum were used by American Indians as money, or woven into belts and other items as an ornament. It is notable that Crawford's "wampum, . . . beaded with . . . dews," like her "calumet of flowers," (re-)assimilates the Indian terms that she found in Longfellow to the natural world.

ruddy   Reddish in colour, often with reference to the human skin in good health or after exposure to the sun.

sunward   Towards the sun.

his soft locks / Of warm, fine haze   Cf."The Four Winds," Hiawatha: ". . . the smoke ascending [from the pipe of the South-wind] / Filled the sky with haze and vapour. . . ."

locks / . . . silver as the birch   Cf. Longfellow, "The Four Winds," Hiawatha: "He [the South-wind] beheld her yellow tresses / Changed and covered o'er with whiteness. . . ."

The great lakes   Presumably the five Great Lakes of central North America.

"Ugh!"   Longfellow, "Vocabulary": "Ugh, yes".

velvet limbs   Soft and sensuous, like velvet.

Cf. Tennyson, The Lover's Tale, I, 397-400: "Framing the mighty landscape to the west, / A purple range of mountain-cones, between / Whose interspaces gushed in blinding bursts / The incorporate blaze of sun and sea."

Fire-ey'd   See Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, IV, i, 114: "fire-eyed".

dream of phantoms   Cf. Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur, 85-87: "And the long mountains ended in a coast / Of ever-shifting sand, and far away / The phantom circle of a moaning sea." There are more than fleeting resemblances between Arthur's". . . last, dim, weird battle of the west" (94) and Crawford's battle of the seasons, with its ". . . late, last thunders of summer and its               ". . . great eagles, lords of naked cliffs" (II, 30-31). Elizabeth Waterston, "Crawford, Tennyson and the Domestic Idyll," The Isabella Valancy Crawford Symposium, ed. Frank M. Tierney (1979), p. 72 links these last quoted lines with Enoch Arden, 579f.: "The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, / The league-long roller thundering on the reef, / The moving whisper of huge trees. . . ."

serf'd   Served; contented, satisfied. The word "serf'd" could also be a shortened form of "surfeited", a possibility reinforced by the suggestion of over-abundance in the surrounding passage.

West Wind   See "The Four Winds" and the "Vocabulary" in Longfellow's Hiawatha for the identification of the "West-Wind" with and as Mudjekee'wis, the "father of Hiawatha".

Brown rivers . . . sunless stole   Cf. S.T. Coleridge, "Kubla Khan," 3-5: "the sacred river, ran . . . Down to a sunless sea."

sumach   Like certain types of maple, the sumach (or sumac) shrub turns a brilliant red in the fall.

tranced   Enchanted; ecstatic.

too late, too late. / Too late   See Tennyson, Guenevere, 168-177: "'Too late, too late! . . . too late!"

cells   Hollow places.

Moon / Of Falling Leaves   In Longfellow's "Vocabulary" the "Moon of the Falling Leaves" is glossed as "September." Crawford's "keen, two-bladed Moon" with "her twin silver blades" (II, 97) may owe a debt to Tennyson, The Princess, I, 100-102: "Then, ere the silver sickle of that month / Became her golden         shield. . . ."

rank   Luxuriant in growth.

vast, horn'd herds   Presumably bison or buffalo.

Cf. Tennyson, Guenevere, 7Sf. (". . . then she seemed to stand / On some vast plains before a setting sun . . ." and so on).

balls   Eye-balls, presumably.

jocund   Cheerful; playful; sprightly.

tripping   Nimble; with a light, short step, and a suggestion of precariousness.

spicy   Fragrant.

bark canoe close-knotted   The panels of bark that constituted the hull of an Indian canoe were tightly sewn together ("close-knotted") by filament made of the roots of the spruce tree.

bronze   Brown colour.

There came a morn   Cf. Tennyson, The Lover's Tale, I, 293: "There came a glorious morning . . ." and "The Four Winds," Hiawatha: "Till one morning, looking northward. . . ."

quarter   The fourth part of the moon's period of monthly revolution.

Lusty   Characterized by vigour, strength, spirit, energy and the like.

arching   Forming an arch.

See the note to II, 10. above.

Esa! esa! shame upon you   Longfellow, "Vocabulary," "Esa, shame upon you." In a note to the "Introduction" of Hiawatha, the American poet observes that in the body of his poem ". . . the English word is generally beside the Indian."

Pale Face   The Moon of the Falling Leaves is here mocked with a term popularly supposed to have been used by the Indians to describe a white person.

Moon of Evil Witches   This phrase is not glossed in Longfellow's "Vocabulary". See the Introduction, pp. xix-xx for a discussion of Katie's use of the word "witch" in I, 46.

Indian Summer   A season of pleasant, warm weather occurring in the autumn after the first frost and before the onset of winter.

Moon of Terror   This phrase is not glossed in Longfellow's "Vocabulary," but presumably it refers to one of the winter months.

the Path of Spirits   The path connecting the land of the living with the Indian equivalent of the Christian Heaven or the Scandanavian Valhalla—the "'Happy Hunting Ground'" (II, 137) described by Longfellow in the final lines of Hiawatha as ". . . the Islands of the Blessed, / . . . the Kingdom of Ponemab, / . . . the land of the Hereafter!" Cf. "The Camp of Souls," Collected Poems, pp. 52-55.

Manitou   In his "Vocabulary" Longfellow describes Gitche Man'ito as "the Great Spirit, the Master of Life."

Cf. "The Ghost of the Trees," Old Spookses' Pass, pp. 130-136.

Desolation   A place that is gloomy, deserted and destitute (or deprived) of inhabitants.

prone   A word associated by Milton with the fallen angels, as in Paradise Lost, I, 195: "Prone on the Flood, [Satan] extended long and large. . . ."

Gallic   Pertaining to France.

constant yearning of his heart   Cf. Tennyson, Enoch Arden, 862: "While in her heart she yearned     incessantly. . . ."

Cf. Tennyson, The Gardener's Daughter, 7-8: "My Eustace might have sat for Hercules; / So muscular he spread, so broad of breast."

See the Introduction, p. xxxxvi for the possible relation between Max's "trinity" of Love and Augustine's conception of human love as a "trace" of the Holy Trinity. The Crawford who mentions "daffodils" and employs Dante as a quintessential ". . . poet of Love" in "My Irish Love," Collected Poems, pp. 261-262 may well have had in mind La Vita Nuova (translated by D.G. Rossetti as The New Life in 1861) when she created Max's markedly Dantean trinity of "The one belov'd [Beatrice, Katie], the lover [Dante, Max] and sweet Love [Dante's Amor]." Perhaps she also had in mind Rossetti's own "Willowwood," the sequence of three sonnets in The House of Life which concludes with the heads of two lovers in Love's "aureole". Given Tennyson's near-ubiquitous influence on Malcolm's Katie, particularly on the 'Love interest' in the poem, his presence is to be expected in Max's "great daffodil": see The Lover's Tale, I 642-643: ". . . Lionel, the beloved, / The loved, the lover . . ." and, more centrally, Maud, I, XXII, ii, 857-861:

         . . . the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
    On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
    To faint in his light, and to die.

    A comment by Elizabeth Waterston, p. 73 is apposite at this point: "Imagery in Crawford, as in Tennyson, introduces many jewels and flowers. Emeralds, topazes and rubies: lilies and roses and crocuses—and, of course, the daffodil—all fall within the Tennysonian range of favoured images."

wings at heel   A proverbial expression of speed.

throbs   Violent pulsations.

Garvin (see Appendix B) plausibly, but without authority, emends "dear" to "drear", a poeticism for dreary: dismal, gloomy. Cf. Longfellow, "Court-yard of the Castle," The Golden Legend, I: "But all is silent, sad, and drear. . . ."

turbid   Troubled, disturbed, perplexed.

sun-ey' d Plenty   The personification of natural abundance. Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, VII, 183-186: ". . . come, / For Love is of the valley, come thou down / And find him: by the happy threshold, he, / Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize. . . ."

The blessed sun himself   See Shakespeare, I Henry IV, I, ii , 9: ". . . the blessed sun himself. . . ."

shanties   Huts: very modest or temporary buildings

pyres   Heaps of inflammable materials, usually for the purpose of burning dead bodies.

See Introduction, p. xl for comments on the figure of the "lean weaver" and his "vanish'd loom".

pallid   pale, wan.

girded up his loins   Proverbial, on the basis of Luke 12.35: "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning." See also Ephesians 6.14: "Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth . . ."

"Mine own!"   See Introduction, pp. xxxv and xl.

eager eyes   See Tennyson, Aylmer's Field, 66-67:     ". . . eager eyes, that still / Took joyful note of all thing joyful. . . ."

thews   See I, 48 and 109, above.

household ways   See Proverbs 31.27: "She looketh well to the ways of her household . . ."; Wordsworth, "She was a Phantom of Delight," 13: "Her household motions light and free . . ."; Tennyson, Enoch Arden, 453: " . . . she went about her household ways . . ."; and In Memoriam, LX, 11: "Moving about the household ways. . . ."

gleam   Here, as earlier (I, 138), a resonantly Tennysonian word; cf. "The Lady of Shalott," 156: "A gleaming shape she floated by . . ."

flitting   Moving softly and lightly.

Waterston, p. 72 compares the "incremental variations" of Tennyson's "0 Swallow, Swallow . . ." (see I, 137-145, above) with "the placing . . . of the word love in this rectilinear lyric of love and construction." The idea of Love as creator is succinctly stated in Tennyson, The Gardener's Daughter, 24-25: "' 'Tis not your work, but Love's.  Love, unperceived, / A more ideal Artist he than all. . . ."  See also the note to V, 168-181, below.

azure   Sky-blue.

rose-wing'd cloud   Cf. D.G. Rossetti, "The Soul's Sphere, The House of Life (1881): "The rose-wing'd hours that flutter in the van / Of Love's . . . span,— / Visions of golden futures. . . ."

strand   Shore or beach.

See the second quotation from Enoch Arden at I, 111-112, above.

lowing herd   Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," 2: ". . . lowing herd. . . ."

Katie's gay garden   Cf. Tennyson, The Gardener's Daughter 122f. for descriptions of Rose and her garden that parallel the passage beginning here.

'Leagurd   Beleagured: surrounded

prim-cut   Formal, regular.

sward   Lawn. Tennyson uses the word "sward" four times in The Princess; see, for example, "Prologue," 95: "The sward was trim as any garden lawn. . . ."

raiment   Clothing; garments.

nimble   Acute, clever; agile.

eternal blossoms 'mid the fruit   Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 147-148: ". . . goodliest Trees loaden with . . . / Blossoms and Fruits at once. . . ."

sceptre   A staff or baton symbolic of royal power or authority. See Introduction, pp. xx-xxn for a discussion of Katie's "queenly" power.

And Malcolm took her through . . .   Cf. the passage in Tennyson, "The Brook", 122f. beginning "He led me through. . . ."

See the second quotation from Enoch Arden at I, 111-112, above. The words "'lassie'" (girl) and "'Bethankit'" (God be thanked) characterize Malcolm Graem as a Scot (see the note to the poem's title, above). The "bethankit" occurs in Robert Burns' "To Haggis".

crystal   Clear, transparent.

Saxon-gilded   Golden, with reference to the stereotypically fair hair of the Saxons, who invaded and conquered England in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.

fetter down   Restrain, control.

grey-ey'd   Grey eyes are frequently associated with wisdom.

bonnie   Scottish (or Northern English) dialect: attractive, fine.

gear   Scottish (or Northern English) dialect: wealth, possessions.

And then, upstarting . . .   Cf. Tennyson, Enoch Arden, 612-613: "Then, though he knew not wherefore, started up / Shuddering . . ." and Aylmer's Field, 527-528: "Thenceforward oft from out a despot dream / The father panting woke. . . ."

Alfred   Mathews, p. 54 notes that Alfred's name "means 'crafty-counsellor.'"

Like a silver coin, and so find out the true   Cf. Tennyson,  Aylmer's Field 181-182: ". . . a laugh/ Ringing like proven coinage true. . . ."

soul . . . walI'd mind   Cf. the immured soul in Tennyson's "The Palace of Art," passim.

Air-blown   Either air-filled or, more romantically, caressed by air or made to blossom (like a full-blown rose) by air.

violet eyes   Cf. Tennyson, Maud, I, XXII, vii (891): ". . . violets blue as your eyes. . . ."

charnel house   A place under or near a church where the bones of the dead are deposited.

wheel   Presumably a diamond-wheel—that is, a metal wheel used to grind and polish diamonds and other precious stones.

three-score years and ten   Psalms 90.10: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten . . . it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

nimbly   Adroitly.

Love . . . / Fierce hands of flame   Cf. Dante, La Vita Nuova, trans. D.G. Rossetti (4th paragraph): "And [Love] . . . held . . . in his hand a thing that was burning in flames; and he said to me, Vide cor tuum ['Behold thy heart']."

A blossom . . . all up-fill'd / With love as with clear dew   Cf. D.G. Rossetti, "The Honeysuckle" where the flowers are ". . . virgin lamps of scent and dew." The word "upfill" (fill up) appears in Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II, iii, 7.

Phoenix   A bird of ancient legend that was said to build for itself a funeral pyre and to rise again from its ashes—hence, a symbol of resurrection and immortality.

high   Intense.

Cf. Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna, I, ii, 132-133: "The sophist sneers: Fool, take / Thy pleasure, right or wrong."

fruitage   Crop of fruit; produce.

boon   Favour, blessing, gift.

to simply cease to be   Cf. Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale," 55-56: "Now more than ever seems it rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with no pain. . . ." See also Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, i, 57f..

Cf. Empedocles lecturing Pausanias on "Mind [as] the spell which governs earth and heaven" in Amold, Empedocles on Etna, I, ii, 26-29 and 77-426.

lying shades   Unreal and deceptive appearances.

fond   Foolish; doting.

purblind Chance   Purblind: lacking or incapable of mental, moral or spiritual vision. The possibility that the universe was not ruled by law or Providence was raised with varying degrees of dismay, resignation and relish by many thoughtful people in Victorian (and pre-Victorian) times. Tennyson, for example, refers to "Chance" in several places, including "The Vision of Sin," 191 ("'Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance . . .'") and In Memoriam, XCV, 4 1-42 ("The Steps Of Time—the shocks of Chance— / The blows of Death.") But the weight of evidence in the central sections of Malcolm's Katie points towards a particular source for Alfred's notion of "purblind Chance" (see Introduction, pp. xxix-xxxi): C[onstantin-] F[rançois] Volney's Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires (Paris, 1791), which was first translated into English as The Ruins; or, a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires in 1795 and subsequently reprinted in many editions. "Unhappy man," exclaims Volney's narrator in the penultimate paragraph of the second chapter of Ruins, "a blind fatality plays with my destiny! . . . a fatal necessity rules by chance the lot of mortals!" And a note to the passage reads: "A blind fatality. This is the universal and rooted prejudice of the East. . . .  Hence result an unconcern and apathy, the most powerful impediments to instruction and civilization."

bark   Barque: a sailing vessel.

The use of flowers and "fire" in this line is Tennysonian: see, for example, "OEnone," 94 (". . . at their feet the crocus brake like fire . . .") and 264 ("All earth and air seem only burning fire").

rubies . . . emerald   As Waterston intimates (see note to II, 182-190, above), a Tennysonian use of jewel imagery; cf. Maud, I, IV (102-103): "A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime / In the little grove where I sit. . . ."

Natant   Floating on the surface of the water; buoyant.

great arms of close-hinged wood   A logging boom: a chain of linked logs stretched across a river or around an area of water to retain floating logs.

potent "G." and "M."   Cf. Tennyson, "The Brook," 192: ". . . the lean P.W. on his tomb. . ."

she made bare the lilies of her feet   Cf. Tennyson, "The Brook," 101-102: ". . . Katie . . . /       . . . sketching with her slender pointed foot . . ."  If anything, Tennyson is more fond of feet than lilies, but he never combines the two as Crawford does here.

The title of Scott's Lady of the Lake is in the background of this line.

Chaste Goddess . . . still shrines   Cf. Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," 1: "Thou still unravished bride of quietness. . . ."

jocund   See the note to II, 78, above.

brakes   Places overgrown with ferns, shrubs, vines and the like. Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, LXXXVI, 2-3: ". . . the gorgeous gloom / Of evening over brake and bloom . . ." and, for a famous treatment of the progress of a stream, "The Brook".

weft and woof   In weaving, the threads that cross from side to side through the web are called the weft and the woof. Crawford may have confused one or other of these terms with the warp, the weaving term for the threads that intersect the weft or woof at right angles.

golden fire   See Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 312: ". . . fretted with golden fire. . . ."

ocean-hidden   Tennyson's work contains several compound terms that use ocean as the first element, as, for example, in In Memoriam, XII, 9:   ". . . ocean- mirrors rounded large. . . ."

limpid   Clear, translucent.

wild hair / A flying wind of gold   Cf. Tennyson, "OEnone," 17-18: round her neck / Floated her        hair. . . ."  Like Katie, OEnone sings a song by a stream in a pastoral valley.

wallow'd . . . monsters   Cf. Tennyson, "The Lotos Eaters," 152: "Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains. . . ."

rose-white soul   See Tennyson, "OEnone," 175-176: ". . . her light foot / Shone rosy-white. . . ."

middle wave   Cf. Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur, 205: ". . . middle mere. . . ."

drive   A North American term: a quantity of timber floating down a river or stream.

marge   Poeticism: the edge of a river.

lily face   Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, II, 283: ". . .  her lily arms. . . ."

Dead, dead or living?   Cf. Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, 523: "Is it death or is it life?"  The rescue of Katie by Arthur recalls the episode in Tennyson's The Princess, IV, 159-174 where Cyril, at great risk to himself (". . . bearing in my left [hand] / The weight of all the hopes of half the world, / [I] strove to buffet to land in vain"), saves the Princess from drowning in a river.

See the note to III, 73f., above.

politic   Expedient; happily contrived.

table di'mond   A diamond with a large, flat uppersurface.

North Wind   The North-Wind (Kabibonok'ka) of Longfellow's Hiawatha is a "fierce" figure who has his "lodge" (Crawford's "far wigwam") "among icebergs, / In the everlasting snow-drifts." In "The Four Winds" section of the poem, he is depicted as the creator of Autumn and Winter who is beaten and sent back to the North from whence he comes by Shin'gebis, "the diver, or greebe" ("Vocabulary"), a figure parallel to the "'Moon / Of Budding Leaves" (IV 23-24) in Malcolm's Katie. In both poems the North Wind engages in a shouting match and in both poems he is depicted as an aggressive wrestler; however, Crawford elaborates Longfellow's portrait of the North-Wind by supplying him with "ice-club" (IV, 4), "war-cry" (IV, 12) and "war-paint" (IV, 28), not to mention some terms from the "Vocabulary" and "Notes" to Hiawatha (see below).

Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, I, 96-98: "A wind arose and rushed upon the South, / And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks / Of the wild woods together. . . ."

White squaw   The winter: wife or 'special other' of the North Wind.

naked chiefs   Defoliated trees. In "The Four Winds" section of Hiawatha, the North-Wind challenges Shingebis to". . . wrestle naked / On the frozen fens and moorlands", and—after much "panting" and grappling— loses.

our great chief the Sun   It is worth noting that in the passage from Catlin quoted by Longfellow in a note to Hiawatha (see the note to H, 2, above), the "Great Spirit" forbids the "Indian Nations" to use "the war-club and the scalping knife" (and, in "The Peace-Pipe," Hiawatha, I, to wear war-paint)—all attributes of Crawford's North Wind (see IV, 4, 17, 20 and 28)—on the "ground" of the "calumet" (IV, 26) or pipe of peace. Crawford may have used this incident, with the significant substitution of the "Sun" for the "Great Spirit" (see Introduction, pp. xli-xliii for a discussion of the role of solar mythology in Malcolm's Katie), as the point of departure for her depiction of the North Wind as a war-like figure in whose face the "Sun" contemptuously blows "his calumet— / Fill'd with the breath of smallest flowers." See Ovid, Fasti, V for the cognate story of Flora and Zephirus.

Council fire   The fire around which the Indians assembled for consultation and deliberation.

the Moon / Of Budding Leaves   May (the "Moon of Leaves" in Longfellow's "Vocabulary") or April. See also the note to IV, i, above.

Ugh   See the note to II, 10, above.

calumet   See the note to II, 2, above: the "small, bright pipe" of IV, 29.

Nature heard her God   Cf. Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, IV, 3 1-34: ". . . who . . . / . . . looks thro Nature, up to Nature's God; / Pursues that Chain which links th' immense design, / Joins heav'n and earth, and mortal and divine. . . ."

Great Worker brooded   Crawford appears to be synthesizing the Great Spirit (Manitou) of Indian theology (see the note to II, 2, above) with the Christian idea that the Holy Spirit, perceived here, as in Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 21 ("Dove-like . . . brooding on the vast Abyss . . ." ), effected God's plan in the creation of the world.

Cf. The Princess, VI, 17-42 for a song that recalls "Bite deep and wide, 0 Axe . . ." in its placement near the beginning of a section of the poem proper, in its prophetic tone and, above all, in its emphasis on constructive activity in the following lines: ". . . they came, / The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree! / But we will . . . / hape it plank and beamfor roof and     floor . . ." and ". . . this shall grow . . . With music in the growing breeze of Time, / The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs / Shall move the stony bases of the world." Tennyson's lyric contains a reference to a "glittering axe" that anticipates both the "silver ringing blow" (IV, 43) of Max's "Bright Seer" (IV, 52) in this lyric and the reference to his axe as "bright" in II, 153, The spare and additive form of Crawford's lyric (octosyllabic couplets) could be said to reflect the rudimentary construction work of Max at this point in the poem.

smite   A word with strong Biblical overtones: strike; assail.

Æons   Eons: long, indefinite periods of time; great cycles of years; ages. Tennyson often uses the word æon and its cognates in an evolutionary  context, as in In Memoriam, XXX, 11, XCV, 41 and CXXVII, 16.

might   Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, CVIII, 6-7:     ". . . though with might/ To scale the heaven's highest height. . . ."

thron'd   Seated, placed, as on a throne.

See Volney, Ruins, XXII ("Origin and Genealogy of Religious Ideas"), especially Sect. i on "Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements, and the physical powers of nature."

Ruins   In this context, the word "Ruins" seems to bear Volney's signature. Cf. Ruins, I-II: "I sat down on the base of a column; . . . there . . . sometimes fixing [my eyes] on the ruins. I fell into a profound revery. . . . Here, said I to myself, an opulent city once flourished: this was the seat of a powerful empire. . . . These heaps of marble formed regular palaces; these prostrate pillars were the majestic ornaments of temples; these ruinous galleries present the outlines of public places. . . . Thus perish the works of men, and thus do nations and empires vanish away!"

hoary sage   Grey-haired (i.e., very old) wise man. Volney?

The lean, lank lion peals / His midnight thunders over lone, red plains   Cf. Volney, Ruins, I: "I ascended the heights that bound [the Valley of the Sepulchres: 'a most astonishing scene of ruins'], and from which the eye commands at once the whole of the ruins and the immensity of desert. The sun had just sunk below the horizon: a streak of red still marked the place of his descent [T]hrough the whole desert every thing was marked with stillness, undisturbed but by the mournful cries of the bird of night, and of some chacals."

beneath . . . shifting sands   Cf. (in addition to Volney's Ruins, I-II) Tennyson, In Memoriam, CXXIII, 1-2: "There rolls the deep where grew the tree. / 0 earth, what changes hast thou seen!"

ruins . . . / Honeycomb the earth   Cf. Volney, Ruins, II.

Space and blanker Chance   Cf. the quotations form Volney and Tennyson in the note to III, 145, above.

flashes   In the sense of a moment of insight, flash(es) is a very Tennysonian word; see, for example, The Princess, II, 375 and V, 466.

she call'd the sun   Cf. Volney, Ruins, XXII, Sect. ii on "Worship of the Stars" and "the sun, as the first   god. . . ."

sow' d the reeling earth   Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, XXXV, 9-Il: "The moanings of the homeless sea, / The sound of streams that swift or slow / Draw down Æonian hills, and sow / The dust of continents to be. . . ."

weird   Unearthly, fated.

Where the well-trimm'd lamps / Of long-past ages   Cf. Volney, Ruins, II: "What are become of so many productions of the hand of man? Where are those ramparts of Nineveh, those walls of Babylon . . . those fleets of Tyre, those dock-yards of Arad, those workshops of Sidon . . ." (and so on)?

imperious   Commanding, haughty, domineering.

molder'd   Mouldered: decayed, crumbled, turned to dust. Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, IV, 63; "'. . . the mouldered lodges of the Past." The Princess' entire speech (IV, 44-65) deals with past thrones in a manner that broadly anticipates Alfred's analysis.

primal   First in time; original.

cestus   A belt or girdle for the waist, worn in ancient times by brides and associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Alfred could well have said with Tennyson in The Prologue to "In Memoriam," 17-18: "Our little systems have their day; / They have their day and cease to       be . . .", though, of course, Tennyson sees man's systems as the "broken lights" of a supreme being.

dullard   Stupid, doltish, air-headed.

wrought   Worked.

glibly   Easily; unproblematically.

Iris-arch   Rainbow, with a possible allusion to Genesis 9.8-17 where God sets his "bow" (Latin: arcus) in the sky as a "token of a covenant between [Him] and the earth." Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, III, 11: "The circled Iris of a night of tears. . . ." In Greek mythology, Iris was a messanger of the gods who appeared as (or had for her sign) the rainbow.

tryst   Trust: appointment.

lusty   See the note to II, 100, above.

Catherine   See the note to the title of the poem.

Troilus swore by Cressèd   The story of the love of Troilus and Cressida is told by Geoffrey Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde and by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida, as well as by various other writers before and after them. In Chaucer and Shakespeare, Cressida is a complex and intriguing character, not simply the amorous and unfaithful widow that she is to some other writers and—judging by his insinuations—to Alfred. Cressèd: a gallicism.

faint shadow of herself   Probably a photograph or similar representation, or, perhaps, a cameo brooch.

watch-star   Guard, in reference to the constellation of the Lesser Bear, whose two stars were sometimes known as the guards of the pole.

a tide / Of strong Eternity   Contrast Alfred's words with those of Tennyson, "Crossing the Bar," 5-8: ". . . such a tide as moving seems asleep . . . When that which drew from out the boundless deep / Turns again
home."

Perchance   Perhaps; as it may be.

See the note to II, 162, above.

See the passage from Tennyson's The Princess quoted in the note to IV, 1-4, above.

lacing   Interlacing: intertwining; criss-crossing.

Bark-flay'd   Stripped, or partially stripped, of bark.

Gods . . . play at games   Cf. Shakespeare, King Lear, IV, i, 37-38: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, / They kill us for their sport."

deep and dark unfaith   Cf. Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine, 871-872: "His honour rooted in dishonour stood. / And faith unfaithful kept him  falsely true."

fretted   An architectural term: exhibiting ornamentation in rectangular or other forms (fretwork).

staunch   Stanch: stop the flow of blood from, as in Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine, 518: "There [the hermit] stanched his wound . . ." (and he lay ". . . for many a week / Hid . . . by the grove / Of poplars . . .   ". . . in daily doubt / Whether to live or die . . ." —as, presumably, did Max).

hist   Hush. Alfred's word choice makes him sound like the snake that he fears. Perhaps the "fell snake" of Pity has hidden itself, not, in his breast, but in his mind.

rogues and villains   Cf. Edmund on Nature, begetting and bastardy in Shakespeare, King Lear, I, ii, 1-22 and Lear's related speech in I, iv, 296-311.

the fou1 dragon Chance   Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, LVI "Dragons of the prime, / That tare each other in their slime. . . ."

cressets   Oil (or coal)-burning lamps mounted on top of a pole or building, or suspended from the roof. Also, large lamps formerly hung in churches.

quarried scars   Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, LVI, 2: "From scarpèd cliff and quarried stone. . . ."

crevasse   A large fissure or deep chasm in a glacier, mountain or, in the
United States, a riverbank.

canon   Canyon: a large gorge or ravine in the Rocky Mountains and great western plateaus of North America.

purple fringes of the night   A clothing metaphor, but see Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," III, 96         (". . . through the purple night") and The Lover's Tale, I, 398 ("A purple range of mountain-cones . . .").

weary moon   See Tennyson, The Princess, III, 302: "For many weary moons. . . ."

eaglets   Small or young eagles.

piercing beak . . . iron talons   Tennyson's famous "Nature, red in tooth and claw . . ." (In Memoriam, LVI. 15) lies generally in the background of these lines, but see also The Princess, V, 372-3 73: ". . . and swoops / The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart and "Boäidicea," 11: ". . . their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon. . . ."

motes   Proverbially small particles of dust, especially those seen floating in a sunbeam.

dulling ear   An ear (hearing) becoming less sensitive or acute.

said Alfred in her ear   See Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 799-802: ". . .  him [Satan] they found / Squat like a Toad, close at the ear of Eve; / Assaying by his Devilish art to reach / The Organ's of her Fancy. . . ."

In the language of flowers, where "every blossom" indeed has ". . . a tale / With silent grace to tell, / From rose . . . / To . . . heather bell . . ." (V, 52-55), the "blue 'Forget-me-not'" is almost invariably associated with love for reasons that are obvious in its very name. This is certainly true in Tennyson's work: see "The Brook," 172-173: "I move the sweet forget-me-nots / That grow for happy lovers" (such as the Katie of that poem). In the 1832 version of "The Miller's Daughter" (and it should be remembered that, in his own way, Crawford's Malcolm is a miller), Tennyson includes a "Song" on "the blue forget-me-not" (see Ricks' edition of The Poems, p. 381) and in the 1842 he includes a song inspired by "the blue Forget-me-not" (202). The balladic form (ababcdcd) in which Crawford has cast Katie's "Forget-me-not" Song reflects the simple sincerity of its singer.

strain   Tune, song, lyric.

musky grot   Poeticism: scented cave or natural cavity in the earth.

rose that reddens to the gale   Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, XI, 14:  ". . . leaves that redden to the    fall. . . ."

snarls   Tangles, knots.

unco   Scottish and Northern English dialect: unknown, strange.

happy dew   On various occasions Tennyson describes tears as dew: see, for example, The Princess, VII. 120-12 1: ". . . the dew / Dwelt in her eyes. . . ."

happy, happy tears   Cf. Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," 25: "More happy love! more happy, happy love!"

closer   Denser; harder.

lawful wife   See the service for the "Solemnization of Matrimony" in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: for "lawful" Matrimony and "wedded wife".

amaze   Poeticism: amazement, astonishment.

comelier   Prettier, more beautiful.

False, false!   Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, VI, 187: ". . . false, false, false to me!"

See Waterston, p. 73 for the parallel between this stichomythic passage and Tennyson, Aylmer's Field, 240-250.

Helen Wynde   In Scotland and the North of England, a wynde (or wynd) is a narrow street or passage leading off from a main thoroughfare. In Greek mythology, Helen was, of course, the beautiful woman who occasioned the Trojan War. It is notable that while Katie is identified throughout the poem with her father, she herself identifies Max by the token and name of his mother, and does not mention his father.

like Samson with green withs   See Judges 16.7-9: "And Samson said unto [Delilah], If they bind me with seven green withs [new ropes] that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man. . . . [A]nd she bound him with them. . . . And he broke the withs, as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the fire: so his strength was not known."

cur   A degenerate dog; a worthless or contemptible person.

sap   A military term: undermine.

Nemesis   To the early Greeks, a female personification of the wrath of the gods over man's insolent pride (hubris): a representation of retributive justice.

rend   Split; tear apart.

pure-barb'd eyes   Eyes protected by purity or innocence. A barb is a piece of defensive armour worn by a war-horse in ancient times.

goad   A pointed instrument used to stimulate an animal such as a horse into going farther; anything that provokes to action.

mould'ring   See the note to IV, iii, above.

blank-ey'd   Eyes that are devoid of expression, interest or emotion—in a word, vacant.

wassail bowl   A large bowl in which liquor was mixed for a festive occasion.

Lethe   In Roman mythology (and see also Dante, Purgatorio, XXVIII, 134-137), a river in Hades from which souls who were about to be reincarnated drank to induce forgetfulness of their previous existence. To drink the water of Lethe is to drink of oblivion.

poppies   A traditional emblem of sleep and death.

panting   Gasping or yearning for air or, as here, water. Cf. Psalm 42.1: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, 0 God."

blind, creative giants   See the note to III, 145, above. Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, CXVIII, 1-2: "Contemplate all this work of Time [that is, evolution], / The giant labouring in his youth . . ." and The Princess, III, 250-253: "Would . . . we had been, / . . . a race / Of giants living, each, a thousand years, / That we might see our own work out. . . ."

In a letter to Archibald Lampman on June 3, 1893, Edward William Thomson commented that the second of the interspersed lyncs in Malcolm's Katie, "0, Love builds on the azure sea . . ." (II 254-265), "has a sort of William Blake feeling in it that is good" (An Annotated Edition of the Correspondence Between Archibald Lampman and Edward William Thomson [1890-1898], ed. Helen Lynn [1980], p. 83). Thomson's comment is, if anything, more applicable to "Doth true Love lonely grow?" with its resonantly Blakean personifications of Joy, Love, and Pity and its similarly Blakean use of such words and phrases as dewy, woe and sweet roses (see especially "The Golden Net," 4: "'Alas for woe! alas for woe!'" and "My Pretty Rose," 3-4: ". . . 'I've a pretty rose tree,' / And I passed the sweet flower o'er." (These quotations are taken from William Michael Rossetti's influential collection of Blake's "lyrical poems" [p. cxxix]: The Poetical Works of William Blake [1874]—the likely source of any acquaintance Crawford may have had with Blake's work.)

Truth with its leaves of snow   The cadency of this line recalls the famous Chorus in Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon, 314-3 17: "Before the beginning of years / There came to the making of man, / Time, with a gift of tears: / Grief, with a glass that ran. . . ."  Like Crawford's lyric, Swinburne's chorus dwells on the interconnectedness of "Time," "Grief," "Pleasure . . . pain" and "Love" (316, 323): it also refers to ". . . the winds of the north and the south. . . ."  There is thus a possibility that the "sort of William Blake feeling" in "Doth true Love lonely grow?" derives in fact from Swinburne, a poet greatly interested in contraries (and, as it happens, one of the most sensitive students and critics of Blake in the Victorian period).

cypress-hued   The cypress, in part because of the dark colour of its foliage, has traditionally been associated with death. See Tennyson, The Lover's Tale, I, 527-528: ". . . cypresses, symbols of mortal woe, / That men plant over graves."

In much Victorian literature "Sorrow" is seen as a formative force in human development and earthly life as (to quote Keats) a "vale of soul-making". See, especially, Tennyson, In Memoriam, passim, and, particularly, III, 1-3: "0 Sorrow, cruel fellowship. / 0 Priestess in the vaults of Death, / 0 sweet and bitter in a breath . . ." and LIX, 1-3: "0 Sorrow, wilt thou live with me / No casual mistress, but a wife, / My bosom-friend and half of life. . . ." See also George Eliot, Adam Bede, XLII: "Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state."

matrix   Womb; that which encloses and gives life, like a womb.

thews   See the note to I, 109, above.

clamour   Loud and continued noise; loud complaint; urgent demand.

brine   Salty water.

lapse   Slip or gradually fall, in the religious sense of a falling away from truth or rectitude.

Chaos   The unformed matter out of which the universe was created; see Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 9-10 ("In the Beginning . . . the Heav'ns and Earth / Rose out of Chaos . . . ) and several other references.

the great Creative Hand   In Christian art, a hand is often used as a metonymy for God, and as a symbol of His great power and creativity, not least in the making of man and his world. Cf.Tennyson, In Memoriam, LXIX, 14-18: "I found an angel of the night . . . He reached the glory of a hand, / That seemed to touch it [my crown] into leaf . . ." and CXXIV, 23-24: "And out of darkness came the hands / That reach through nature, moulding men."

gauntlet   A large glove made wholly or partly of iron and worn as part of a suit of armour. In token of a challenge, the gauntlet was thrown down or, more aggressively, dashed in the face of an opponent.

vintage wain   A wagon used for the transportation of grapes for wine-making.

falter'd   Moved as if uncertainly or hesitantly.

stars . . . oxen   Here, and in the wain moon simile, Crawford may have been remembering that the constellation of Ursa Major (the Great Bear) is also known as "Charles's Wain" or "the Wagon."

cusp'd   The context indicates that Crawford intended cusped, not in its usual sense of peaked or pointed, but in the astronomical sense of the points or "horns" of the crescent moon or the partially eclipsed sun.

dark wood   See Dante, Inferno, I, 2: the dark or gloomy wood ("selva obscura") in which the poet goes astray.

Spic'd   Scented.

Whip-poor-will   A nocturnal goatsucker found in eastern Canada and the United States, the whip-poor-will has a plaintive and haunting cry which, as R.E. Rashley observes in Poetry in Canada: The First Three Steps (1958: rpt. 1979). p. 49, so impressed Canadian settlers that it became "the symbol of [their] loneliness."

boss'd   Embossed: represented. as it were, in relief.

gay, enamell'd children   A periphrastic phrase for frogs that is reminiscent of the James Thomson of The Seasons, though see Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 148-149: "Blossoms and Fruits at once of golden hue / Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colors mixt . . ." (and see also the notes to VII, 31, below).

tinkling . . . streamlets   Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam, C, 13: ". . . runlet tinkling from the       rock. . . ."

two wooden jaws / . . . sloping floor   A log chute—that is, a long, open trough or "slide" (VI, 117) containing water to facilitate the descent of logs to the river (or downstream, perhaps around rapids) and, thence, to Malcolm's sawmills.

sheen   Brightness, splendour, gleam. Cf. Tennyson, "Song" ("The lintwhite and the throstlecock . . ."), 28: "Thy locks are all of sunny sheen. . . ."

Naiad   In Greek mythology, Naiads were the female personfications of rivers, streams and lakes.

Alfred paus'd a space   Cf. Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," 167.  ". . . Lancelot mused a little space. . . ."

A handful of brown dust   See Tennyson, Maud, II. V, 1 (241): "And my heart is a handful of dust. . . ."

pointed to the stars   Each of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso ends with a reference to the stars, which are moved by Love (Amor).

throes   Agonies and, in this volcanic context, eruptions.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, V, i, 262-263: ". . . from her fair and unpolluted flesh / May violets spring!"

The reference here is apparently to the arrow of Eros or Cupid, the god of love, who is traditionally represented as a winged archer. Alfred's Eros
promises not love but death.

horrid zones   Dreadful, encircling bands. Milton several times uses the word "horrid" in reference to the fallen angels; see, for example, Paradise Lost, I, 51    (". . . [Satan] with his horrid crew . . ." ) and VI, 305   (". . . in the Air / Made horrid Circles. . . .").

Hydra   A many-headed sea-snake killed by Hercules.

brow and thigh   Cf. Judges 15.8: "And [Samson] smote them hip and thigh. . . ."

hucksters   Hawkers or salesmen who deal in small articles.

thralls   Slaves, serfs.

knout   An instrument of punishment not unlike a cat-o'-nine-tails used in Russia and associated with the horrors of the serf-system (see the previous
entry and the note at I, 81, above).

See Mathews, pp. 58-59 and David S. West, "Malcolm's Katie: Alfred as Nihilist not Rapist," Studies in Canadian Literature, 3 (Winter, 1978), p. 137 for discussions of the meaning of the words and symbols in this passage.

poppies   See the note at V, 160.

propylaeum   The porch, gate or entrance to a building, particularly a temple or other sacred edifice. The great and only entrance to the Acropolis in Athens is the Propylaea.

lictors . . . fasces    In Roman times, lictors were attendants who walked before high magistrates carrying fasces (bundles of wooden rods bound together by a strap and enclosing an axe) which were the symbol of the magistrate's authority. Among the duties of the lictors was the apprehension and punishment of criminals. Consistent with his views as expressed elsewhere, Alfred does not envisage a retributive afterlife.

wake . . . perchance   Cf. Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, i, 64-65: "To die, to sleep, / To sleep—perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub. . . ."

shelving   Sloping, inclining.

long slide   See the note to VI, 38-39, above.

chamber   Cavity, interior.

gaunt   Thin, as with fasting or suffering. Cf. Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine, 759 and 811: "Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself. . . ." (See also the notes to IV, 223 and 247, above).

slide   Again, see the note to VI, 38-39, above.

Katie's opening eyes   Cf. Tennyson, "The Brook," 167-169: ". . . they . . . / Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content / Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well. . . ."

larger soul   In addition to the two quotations from Shakespeare that are given in the note to I, 48, two passages from Tennyson (both, significantly, from near the end of poems) are pertinent here and at I, 137 ("large arms"): (1) the passage in The Princess, VII, 263f. in which man is said, in time, to become more like woman "in moral height" without losing ". . . the wrestling thews that throw the world" and woman is similarly said to become more like man in "mental breadth" and "larger mind" and (2) the passage in In Memoriam, CVI, 29-30 which optimistically speaks of "Ring[ingl in the valiant man and free, / The larger heart, the kindlier hand and of "Ring[ing] out the darkness of the land. . . ."

cast herself . . . hid her face   Cf. the final stanza of D.G. Rossetti, "The Blessed Damozel": "And then she cast her arms along / The golden barriers / And laid her face between her hands, / And wept."

The diction and cadences of these lines reinforce the Christ-like quality of Max's saving of Alfred: cf. Mark 5.41-42 "And [Jesus] took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her . . . arise. And straightway the damsel arose and John 15.13: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It would appear that the "voice in Katie's soul" (VI, 146) is akin to the "still small voice" of God in 1 Kings 19.12.

man's triumph . . . Danger's lion   See Tennyson, "OEone," 160-163:    ". . . through a life of shocks, / Dangers, and deeds . . . endurance [will] grow / Sinewed with action, and the full-grown will. . . ."

willow's shadow   The (weeping) willow is traditionally associated with sorrow and death. See Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," IV, 123- 124:". . . a boat / Beneath a willow left afloat . . ." and D.G. Rossetti, "Willowwood," The House of Life: ". . . all ye [mournful forms] that walk in Willowwood / That walk with hollow faces burning white. . . ."

fair devil   See Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 478: "fair devil".

straight   Immediately.

hale   Healthy, robust.

Upon his knee a child, / Nam'd—Alfred   Cf. Tennyson, The Lover's Tale, IV, 173-174: "'His other father you! Kiss him, and then / Forgive him, if his name be Julian too'" and Enoch Arden, 741- 742: "Philip, the slighted suitor of old times, / Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees. . . ." 

seal of pardon   Sign of forgiveness.

one who sinn'd and woke / To sorrow   Cf. 1 Corinthians 15.34: "Awake to righteousness, and sin not . . ." and 2 Corinthians 7.10: "godly sorrow worketh repentence to salvation not to be repented of. . . ."

hand in hand   See the note to I, 106 above and, particularly, Milton, Paradise Lost, XII, 648-649: "They [Adam and Eve] hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way."

Eden   See Tennyson, "The Two Voices," 2 12-213 ("Saw distant gates of Eden gleam, / And did not dream it was a dream ); The Gardener's Daughter, 187       (". . . that Eden where she dwelt . . ."); Enoch Arden, 556-558 ("so the three, / Set in this Eden of all plenteousness, / Dwelt with eternal summer, ill-content"); The Princess, VII, 277 ("Then comes the statlier Eden back to men . . ."); The Lover's Tale, I, 538- ("Methought . . . all the separate Edens of this earth, / To centre in this place and time"); and In Memoriam LXXXVIII, 1-2 ("Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, / Rings Eden through the budded quicks . . ." and [Epilogue], 27-28 ("She enters, glowing like the moon / Of Eden on its bridal         bower . . ."). Needless to say the Edens of the Old Testament and Paradise Lost also lie behind the conclusion of Crawford's poem (see Introduction, p. xvii and the notes to VII, 31, below).

Hoot   Scottish and Northern English dialect: an expression of dissatisfaction or impatience.

lad   A word for a youth or young man with a distinctly Scottish or Northern English flavour.

these wild woods   Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 910: ". . . these wild Woods [of Eden]. . . ." See also The Princess, I, 90 and 99 for ". . . the wild woods. . . ."

plains   See Milton, Paradise Lost, V, 143:             ". . . Paradise and Eden's happy Plains . . ." and VIII, 275: ". . . ye Rivers, Woods and Plains. . . ."

fairer far   Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, XII, 463-464: ". . . for then [at the end of time] the Earth / Shall all be Paradise, far happier place / Than this of Eden, and far happier days"; XII, 587: "A paradise within thee, happier far": and Paradise Regained, IV 612-614: "For though that seat of earthly bliss be fail'd, / A fairer Paradise is founded now / For Adam and his chosen sons. . . ."

bounteous   Generous, munificent.

starvelings   A creature (here a person) who is weak for want of food.

mellowing   Softening, enriching.

increase   Crops, produce.

rocking woods   Swaying, oscillating, presumably as a result of the wind.

want   Deprivation, scarcity, poverty.

smooth sward of selfish Eden bowers   Cf. Tennyson, OEnone, 93: "Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower . . ." and D.G. Rossetti "Eden Bower," passim. In Paradise Lost, Milton repeatedly refers to the "bower(s)" (arbours, shady recesses, shelters made with branches or vines) of Eden, as for example in IV, 690 ("Thus walking hand in hand alone [Adam and Eve] pass'd / On to thir blissful Bower . . .") and IV, 738 (". . . into thir inmost bower / Handed they went . . ."). (See also the second quotation from Tennyson's In Memoriam in the note to VIII, 23f., above.) The use of "selfish" in this context indicates that in Katie's view (and almost certainly Crawford's) the "fairer" (VIII, 31) Eden will be achieved with, in the words of Eliot's Romola, XXV, the "subjugation of selfish interests to the general good."