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Verse 9

9. The dawning of the day Literally, Let it not see the eyelashes of the dawn; that is, the first rays of the sun. Sophocles speaks of the eyelid of the golden day. ( Antig., 103.) The Arab poets call the sun the eye of the day. In his early struggling rays their imagination traces eyebrows for the approaching sun. “Like the sun, before whose face the mantle of clouds is spread, while through the rifts his eyebrows appear.” But this and other citations, made by Schultens from the Arab muse, pale before the striking and tender beauty of our text. Milton has evidently borrowed from it

“Ere the high lawns appeared

Under the opening eyelids of the dawn

We drove afield.” Lycidas, 50. 26.

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