233. ~the violet-embroidered vale~. The notion that flowers _broider_ or ornament the ground is common in poetry: comp. _Par. Lost_, iv. 700: "Under foot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay _Broidered_ the ground." In _Lyc._ 148, the flowers themselves wear 'embroidery.' The nightingale is made to haunt a violet-embroidered vale because these flowers are associated with love (see Jonson's _Masque of Hymen_) and with innocence (see _Hamlet_, iv. 5. 158: "I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died"). Prof. Hales, however, thinks that some particular vale is here alluded to, and argues, with much acumen, that the poet referred to the woodlands close by Athens to the north-west, through which the Cephissus flowed, and where stood the birthplace of Sophocles, who sings of his native Colonus as frequented by nightingales. The same critic regards the epithet 'violet-embroidered' as a translation of the Greek +iostephanos+ (= crowned with violets), frequently applied by Aristophanes to Athens, of which Colonus was a suburb. Macaulay also refers to Athens as "the violet-crowned city." It is, at least, very probable that Milton might here associate the nightingale with Colonus, as he does in _Par. Reg._ iv. 245: see the following note.
234. ~love-lorn nightingale~, the nightingale whose loved ones are lost: comp. Virgil, _Georg._ iv. 511: "As the nightingale wailing in the poplar shade plains for her lost young, ... while she weeps the night through, and sitting on a bough, reproduces her piteous melody, and fills the country round with the plaints of her sorrow." _Lorn_ and _lost_ are cognate words, the former being common in the compound _forlorn_: see note, l. 39. Milton makes frequent allusion to the nightingale: in _Il Penseroso_ it is 'Philomel'; in _Par. Reg._ iv. 245, it is 'the Attic bird'; and in _Par. Lost_ viii. 518, it is 'the amorous bird of night.' He calls it the Attic bird in allusion to the story of Philomela, the daughter of Pandion, King of Athens. Near the Academy was Colonus, which Sophocles has celebrated as the haunt of nightingales (Browne). Philomela was changed, at her own prayer, into a nightingale that she might escape the vengeance of her brother-in-law Tereus. The epithet 'love-lorn,' however, seems to point to the legend of A{ =e}don (Greek +aêdôn+, a nightingale), who, having killed her own son by mistake, was changed into a nightingale, whose mournful song was represented by the Greek poets as the lament of the mother for her child.