Enjoys the drops, and shakes his glittering wings,—
Then grasps his bolt, and, conscious of his power,
’Mid those bright orbs assumes his wonted seat,
And thro’ the lucid shower his living lightning flings.
Note 1. Mr. Roscoe points out that Spenser (Lodowick Bryskett) has a passage similar to this sonnet in his Mourning Muse of Thestylis—
“The blinded archer boy,
Like lark in shower of rain,
Sat bathing of his wings,
And glad the time did spend
Under those crystal drops
Which fell from her fair eyes,
And at their brightest beams
Him proyn’d in lovely wise.”
Warton in his observations on the “Fairy Queen” (vol. i., p. 223) has traced this passage to Ariosto—
“Così a le belle lagrime le piume
Si bagna amore, e gode al chiaro lume,”
though he thinks Spenser’s verses bear a stronger resemblance to those of Nic. Archias (or the Count Nicolo d’Arco, a Latin poet of the 16th century):—
