To Althea, From Prison — Page 166
This is a poem that takes the winds with an answering flight. Should they be ‘birds’ or ‘gods’ that wanton in the air in the first of these gallant stanzas? Bishop Percy shied at ‘gods,’ and with admirable judgment suggested ‘birds,’ an amendment adopted by the greater number of succeeding editors, until one or two wished for the other phrase again, as an audacity fit for Lovelace. But the Bishop’s misgiving was after all justified by one of the MSS. of the poem, in which the ‘gods’ proved to be ‘birds’ long before he changed them. The reader may ask, what is there to choose between birds so divine and gods so light? But to begin with ‘gods’ would be to make an anticlimax of the close. Lovelace led from birds and fishes to winds, and from winds to angels.
‘When linnet-like confined’ is another modern reading. ‘When, like committed linnets,’ daunted the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, it is right seventeenth century, and is now happily restored; happily, because Lovelace would not have the word ‘confined’ twice in this little poem.