To Charles Diodati
P. 28. Chester’s Dee: the old city of Chester is situated on the Dee (Lat. Deva).
P. 28. Vergivian wave (Lat. Vergivium salum): the Irish Sea.
P. 28. it is not my care to revisit the reedy Cam, etc.: this was the period of his rustication from Christ’s College, Cambridge, due, it seems, to some difficulty which Milton had with his tutor, Mr. Chappell.
P. 28. the tearful exile in the Pontic territory: Ovid, who was relegated (rather than exiled) to Tomi, a town on the Euxine.
P. 28. Maro: the Latin poet, Publius Virgilius Maro.
P. 29. or the unhappy boy... or the fierce avenger: as Masson suggests, the allusions here may be to Shakespeare’s Romeo and the Ghost in Hamlet.
P. 29. the house of Pelops, etc.: subjects of the principal Greek tragedies.
P. 29. the arms of living Pelops: an allusion to the ivory shoulder of Pelops, by which, when he was restored to life after having been served up at a feast of the gods, given by his father Tantalus, the shoulder consumed by Ceres was replaced.
P. 30. thy own flower: the anemone into which Adonis was turned by Venus, after his dying of a wound received from a wild boar during the chase.
P. 30. alternate measures: the alternate hexameters and pentameters of the Elegy.