...linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony. (139-44) Milton seems to have considered the verse paragraph as his unit of construction. The syntactical...

...linked sweetness, long drawn out: With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice, through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony, The subject here is song — specifically, how singing, while it may lead us through a thousand complications,...

...echoes Milton's "soft Lydian airs, / Married to immortal verse," exceeding that of "Orpheus' self" — such "strains as would have won the ear / Of Pluto to have quite set free / His half-regained Eurydice" ("L" Allegro," 136-37, 145-50, The Portable Milton, 65). But both Wordsworth...

...linked sweetness long drawn out With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden...may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto to have quite set...

...linked sweetness long drawn out ; With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The nudting voiee through mazes running ; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony." Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding surface, the unbroken continuance, the easy gradation...