Note 26 — PART II.
Reading edition
P. 165. Have slept with the bee.
The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be moonlight.
The rhyme in this verse, as in one about sixty lines before, has an appearance of affectation. It is, however, imitated from Sir W. Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro—in whose mouth I admired its effect:
O! were there an island, Tho’ ever so wild, Where woman might smile, and No man be beguiled, &c.