Note 638 — INDEX TO THE NOTES.

He called it Hæmony. He is the shepherd lad of line 619. Haemony: Milton invents the plant, both name and thing. But the adjective Haemonian is used, in Latin poetry as = Thessalian, Haemonia being the old name of Thessaly. And as Thessaly was regarded as a land of magic, ‘Haemonian’ acquired the sense of ‘magical’ (see Ovid, Met. vii 264, “Haemonia radices valle resectas,” etc.), and Milton’s Haemony is simply “the magical plant.” Coleridge supposes that by the prickles and gold flower of the plant Milton signified the sorrows and triumph of the Christian life.