• The Muse “of the beautiful voice,” who presided over eloquence and heroic verse. ↩
• The nine daughters of Pierus, king of Macedonia, called the Pierides. They challenged the Muses to a trial of skill in singing, and being vanquished were changed by Apollo into magpies. Ovid, Metamorphoses V , Maynwaring’s Tr. :⁠— “Beneath their nails Feathers they feel, and on their faces scales; Their horny beaks at once each other scare, Their arms are plumed, and on their backs they bear Pied wings, and flutter in the fleeting air. Chatt’ring, the scandal of the woods, they fly, And there continue still their clam’rous cry: The same their eloquence, as maids or birds, Now only noise, and nothing then but words.” ↩
• The highest heaven. ↩
• The planet Venus. ↩
• Chaucer, “Knightes Tale”:⁠— “The besy larke, the messager of day, Saleweth in hire song the morwe gray, And firy Phebus riseth up so bright, That all the orient laugheth of the sight.” ↩