Note 42 — SUMMER:
Reading edition
I think these two lines would not have passed without animadversion in any of our great schools.—Warton.
Another couplet followed in the manuscript:
Here Tereus mourns, and Itys tells his pain, Of Progne they, and I of you complain.
The horrible mythological story of Progne killing her son Itys, and serving up his flesh to her husband Tereus out of revenge for his violence to her sister Philomela, had no connection with the plaintive sighs of a love-sick swain for an absent mistress. The inappropriateness of the allusion was no doubt the reason why Pope omitted the couplet.