Longfellow's exquisite translation:

Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, Prol. to Troilus and Cressida, 22:

On parting=departing, cf. Shakes. Cor. v. 6: "When I parted hence;" Goldsmith, D. V. 171: "Beside the bed where parting life was laid," etc.

 

2. The lowing herd wind, etc. Wind, and not winds, is the reading of the MS. (see fac-simile of this stanza above) and of all the early editions—that of 1768, Mason's, Wakefield's, Mathias's, etc.—but we find no note of the fact in Mitford's or any other of the more recent editions, which have substituted winds. Whether the change was made as an amendment or accidentally, we do not know;10 but the original reading seems to us by far the better one. The poet does not refer to the herd as an aggregate, but to the animals that compose it. He sees, not it, but "them on their winding way." The ordinary reading mars both the meaning and the melody of the line.

 

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3. The critic of the N. A. Review points out that this line "is quite peculiar in its possible transformations. We have made," he adds, "twenty different versions preserving the rhythm, the general sentiment and the rhyming word. Any one of these variations might be, not inappropriately, substituted for the original reading."

Luke quotes Spenser, F. Q. vi. 7, 39: "And now she was uppon the weary way."

6. Air is of course the object, not the subject of the verb.

7. Save where the beetle, etc. Cf. Collins, Ode to Evening:

and Macbeth, iii. 2:

10. The moping owl. Mitford quotes Ovid, Met. v. 550: "Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen;" Thomson, Winter, 114:

and Mallet, Excursion:

 

12. Her ancient solitary reign. Cf. Virgil, Geo. iii. 476: "desertaque regna pastorum." A MS. variation of this line mentioned by Mitford is, "Molest and pry into her ancient reign."

13. "As he stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church. Tennyson (In Mem. x.) speaks of resting

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