Notes

1] The first version of "Cooper’s Hill" was first published in 1642. John Denham (1615-69) inherited from his father, a notable judge, an estate at Egham in Surrey, and this location provides the poem with its organization. The speaker stands on the top of Cooper’s Hill, which, like the nearby St. Anne’s Hill, overlooks the extensive water-meadows known as Egham Mead, through which the river Thames flows on its way to London and the sea. Facing first to the east, he describes and reflects on distant London; turning north-west he describes and reflects on Windsor and its castle (a few miles away); looking down on the river and the meadow beneath the hill he describes a stag hunt and reflects on the relations between kings and subjects. As the poem moves from the distant to the near in topographical terms, it moves from indirect to direct commentary on the political situation as it appeared on the eve of the Civil War. The underlying idea of the poem, scenically and politically, is expressed in lines 223-39: it is the conflict between opposing principles that produces an equilibrium of forces; harmony is only possible because disharmony exists. Allied to this is a concept of reciprocity, announced in the opening lines of the poem; reciprocity implies mutual interdependence, reified in the law that should govern the relationship of the king to his subjects.

2] Parnassus: a high mountain in Greece, sacred to the Muses, and suited to meditation.

3] Helicon: another Greek mountain sacred to the Muses, notable for the spring called Hippocrene.

14] Paul’s: St. Paul’s Cathedral in the city of London. This is the old medieval cathedral, which had been restored and partially rebuilt with some assistance from Charles I. It was to be destroyed in the Great Fire of London, 1666.

15] such a muse: the renovation of St. Paul’s, undertaken in the 1630s, had been celebrated by Edmund Waller in his poem “Upon His Majesty’s Repairing of Paul’s.”

23] meteors grow: meteors were supposed to be exhalations from the earth (hence “meteorology” for the science of the weather).

49] Windsor: on a rise overlooking the Thames stands the royal palace of Windsor Castle; the “majestic load” of l. 65.

57] stupendious: early form of "stupendous."

61] thy master’s: Charles I.

68] Atlas: the mountain in North Africa. Atlas, a Titan, king of Mauritania, was a keen astronomer; when Perseus showed him the head of the gorgon Medusa he was turned into the mountain, which was supposed to support the heavenly spheres of the old astronomy.

76] Cybele: wife of Saturn, and mother of the gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon. Some representations of her depict her wearing a tower as a headdress.

83] Various stories attributed the foundation of Windsor Castle to Julius Caesar in 55 BC; to Brut, the legendary Trojan who left the Trojan settlement in Italy to settle in Britain and give it its name; to Albanact, his equally legendary son who became king of Scotland; to King Arthur of the Round Table, and to the Danish king of England, Knut or Canute (1016-35).

86] Homer: the fact that seven cities claimed to be his birthplace was taken as an index of Homer’s greatness as a poet.

93] Edward: Edward III (1327-77) and his son, also Edward, known as the Black Prince (died 1376).

94] lilies: the heraldic lilies of the French monarchy, claimed by Edward III and worn in his standard, won by his son the Black Prince, especially at the battle of Poitiers. The contrast is rather false; as the victor in the battle of Crécy (1346) Edward III had shown his own martial ability.

95] Bellona: Edward III’s consort, Queen Philippa, credited with the victory of the Scots at Neville’s Cross in 1346 when her husband and son were campaigning in France. As a result of this victory, the Scots king, David II, was held a prisoner in England.

98] Thy son the other brought: Edward, the Black Prince, captured Jean II of France at the battle of Poitiers, 1356.

112] a royal pair: Charles I, of the Scottish house of Stuart, and his Queen, the French princess Henrietta Maria.

117] thy great grandsire: Edward I, grandfather of Edward III, known as the “hammer of the Scots.”

125] that saint: St. George, a Christian soldier from Asia Minor, finally a martyr under the persecution of Diocletian. Soldiers returning from the Crusades brought his cult to England, and Edward III adopted him as the patron saint of England, replacing St. Edmund, and dedicated the chapel at Windsor Castle to him, making this the seat of the Order of the Garter (1348-9).

127] The star of the Order shows the shield of St. George, a red cross on white ground, surrounded by a blue garter, inscribed with the motto “Honi soit quy mal y pense.”

129] Charles I, who as king of both Scotland and England (in which Denham includes Wales) unites the island of Great Britain, surrounded by blue sea.

142] affect: desire.

146] an emulous hill: St. Anne’s Hill, not far from Cooper’s Hill.

149] th’ adjoining abbey: Chertsey Abbey, a Benedictine monastery.

152] Christian king: Henry VIII, who dissolved the monasteries and seized their property between 1536 and 1539.

165] his learned pen: in 1521 Henry VIII published a Latin tract defending the seven sacraments against the attack of Martin Luther. The Pope thereupon gave him the title Fidei Defensor, “Defender of the Faith.”

171] block: a reference to Aesop’s fable of the frogs who, rejecting the rule of a block of wood, were granted instead a stork for sovereign, that ate them up.

178] calenture: “a distemper peculiar to sailors in hot climates: wherein they imagine the sea to be green fields, and will throw themselves into it, if not restrained” (Johnson’s Dictionary, 1755).

192] Tagus and Pactolus: rivers celebrated for their sands of gold by classical poets.

200] mower: the labourer with a scythe, who reaps the harvest.

212] both Indies: the East Indies, associated with spices, and the West Indies, associated with gold (l. 212).

221] Eridanus: The classical name for the river Po in Italy, celebrated by Virgil as the king of rivers.

240] the self-enamour’d youth: Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in a still pool of water, not the moving water of a river.

244] toils: nets for catching beasts, accoutrements of Diana the huntress.

251] Dryades: nymphs or sprites of the woodlands, as naiads are river-nymphs.

255] Faunus and Silvanus: rural gods of Italy.

256] horrid: shaggy. Since the animals are deer, this may be an error for “horned,” as in the corresponding line in the second version.

257] elixir: the philosopher’s stone, the substance capable of turning all metals to gold, as the alchemists believed.

275] declining statesman: a minister of state whose power is waning. This simile encourages the reader to interpret the pursuit and death of the stag as an allegory of the trial and death of Lord Strafford in 1641; when his enemies in Parliament, unable to convict him of crimes, passed a bill of attainder that declared him a traitor; he wrote to Charles I, urging him to sign the bill into law (thus ensuring his own execution), for the sake of peace between the King and his subjects.

302] the self-same place: Runny Mead, or Runnymede, is a part of the larger Egham Mead which lies below Cooper’s Hill. Here in 1215 the barons compelled King John to accept the Magna Carta, or Great Charter. However, as Denham, notes, this positive achievement of concord out of discord did not bring an end to the struggle between kings and subjects.

320] that seal: the matching contributions of liberty and love that Denham has just described.

326] the quotation marks may be simply a way of drawing attention to this summation of what has been said; if the lines are a quotation, it has not been identified.

331] Antaeus: a giant, son of Terra, the earth, and Neptune, god of the sea. When he wrestled with Hercules, he gained new strength from his mother every time he was thrown to the ground.

337] bays: embankments ("bogs" in original text).

Other poems by Sir John Denham