Or possibly
the garlands withered at the moment when Spring 'threw down her kindling
buds' (stanza 16), I do not well understand the expression 'magic
mantles.' There seems to be no reason why the mantles of the shepherds,
considered as shepherds, should be magic. Even when we contemplate the
shepherds as poets, we may fail to discern why any magical property
should be assigned to their mantles. By the use of the epithet 'magic'
Shelley must have intended to bridge over the gap between the nominal
shepherds and the real poets, viewed as inspired singers: for this
purpose he has adopted a bold verbal expedient, but not I think an
efficient one. It may be noticed that the 'uncouth swain' who is
represented in _Lycidas_ as singing the dirge (in other words, Milton
himself) is spoken of as having a mantle--it is a 'mantle blue' (see the
penultimate line of that poem).
1. 3. _The Pilgrim of Eternity._ This is Lord Byron. As inventor of the
personage Childe Harold, the hero and so-called 'Pilgrim' of the poem
_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, and as being himself to a great extent
identical with his hero, Byron was frequently termed 'the Pilgrim.
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